


Cops & Robbers

by deemn



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2016-03-18
Packaged: 2018-02-23 22:19:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 34,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2557757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deemn/pseuds/deemn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Where you go, we go."  Here is a way to build a family.  </p><p>[Splits from canon at an unspecified point, post-S2.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Alternatively known as "SQ Housewives of New Jersey." Heck yeah I did.

They start with a sublet townhouse two blocks from the train line that goes directly to Penn Station, just in case.  Regina doesn’t like living so close to the tracks but after the first week of constantly going into the city to meet with headhunters and the like, she sees the use of it.  It’s the end of June when they first settle into the two-bedroom, so she brings Henry with her on Thursday.  He takes her to a particular pizza parlor on the corner of 8th and 37th and the pizza is, actually, to die for.  He’s pleased to have impressed her and she’s just happy to see him want to be with her, and if she blows off the final meet of the day to walk around Times Square with him and see how he tries to play it cool while taking in all the lights—well, no one would blame her.

Certainly, no one would blame her for linking their arms together as they walk, (perhaps a little too tightly for his newly-fourteen tastes) for keeping him close to her in this city of millions of strangers.  Nothing on TV ever prepared her for the _crush_ of the outside world, for how dense and smoky and dirty and _thick_ the atmosphere is.  Henry seems unfazed, almost too trusting; she’s certain that she sees more than one accidental collision pat his pockets down, but he’s fourteen and with his mother and the only thing he carries is the candybar cell phone Emma bought him two years ago.

When they get home to the little house with their bags and boxes and the completely garish mint green paint on the walls, Emma’s sautéing ground beef and blasting Nirvana and Regina takes a deep breath, lets it out with a huff.  “Go wash up,” she murmurs to Henry, kisses his forehead.  “I had fun today.”  

He smiles just enough, glances towards the kitchen doorway and shoots her a look of sympathy before clomping up the stairs with his suddenly size-nine feet.  The volume of the music lowers slightly, but Emma doesn’t crane her neck to see into the living room, so Regina takes her time putting her purse away and slipping her heels off.  When she finally does head into the kitchen, Emma’s already moved on to dicing tomatoes, hands moving quickly and surely with the knife but eyes following Regina around the room.

“Hi,” Regina says quietly, opening the refrigerator and taking out the iced tea they’d made the night before.

“Tony called,” Emma says in a clipped tone.  “Wanted to know where the broad I called him about was, since it was twenty past three and she hadn’t showed or called.”

Her stomach knots quickly; the final meet of the day had been with one of Emma’s contacts, not just another headhunter.  “We went for lunch and lost track of time,” she says, and bites her tongue when Emma’s hostile posture deflates, knife clattering to the cutting board.

“Damn it, Regina… you should’ve called him.  Or me.”

“I didn’t think it was a big deal.”

Emma stares at her for a moment, and a plaintive guitar wail rattles the speakers.  “These favors I’m calling in—it’s a big deal.  Okay?  They’re all _big deal_ favors.”

Regina stares back and sips at her glass of iced tea, unsure of how to smooth this over before Henry comes back downstairs.  “Can I reschedule with him?”

The stare-down lasts a few beats longer, and then Emma sighs, looks away.  “Already did.  Tuesday at eleven.  Two hours before the guy from the legal temping place.  It’s the only time he had, so you’re just gonna have to make it work.”

“Thank you,” she says quietly, and slides the second glass across the counter towards Emma.  “And thank you for starting on dinner.”

Emma’s hand hovers over the knife handle and her gaze is fixed on Regina.  She slowly reaches over to take the drink, nods, and they’re back at their detente just in time for Henry to slide into the kitchen on his socks with a pair of ridiculous neon-framed sunglasses added to his outfit.  “I look good, right?” he drawls.

They laugh, can’t help it.

 

* * *

 

 

She wakes up at seven and pads downstairs in just her pajamas, her robe lost somewhere among the boxes stacked in the basement.  At one point, there’d been a swinging door between the main room and the kitchen—she can see the old hinge-marks in the doorframe—but it’s long gone, so when she switches on the coffee maker, she knows the noise will wake Emma in fifteen minutes anyway and doesn’t bother being quiet while she darts out onto the front stoop to pick up the paper.

Sure enough, just as she’s spreading out the real estate listings on the kitchen table, a muffled whine comes from the living room, followed by the thumping of pillows and a hissed curse or two.  Eventually all the noise produces a tousled blonde head, and after a series of cracks and groans, Emma shuffles into the kitchen with her arm stretched towards the coffee pot.  “It ready yet?” she mumbles, leaning one arm on the counter while the other reaches around to massage her lower back.

“A few minutes,” Regina says, and returns her focus to the newspaper.  “What’s Glen Ridge like?”

“Shithead kids, shithead adults.”

Sighing, she crosses out a whole column with a blue marker.  “Clifton?”

“Wannabe thugs and trust funds.”

Regina crosses out more houses.  “You didn’t say how it went yesterday.”

“Should tell you how it went,” Emma grumbles, and flops into the chair across from her, stretches her bare legs out to reach the patch of sunlight shining through the sliding door.  “They’re all saying the same shit.  I need certification in like, three different finance categories.”

“You didn’t before?”

“I ran my own gig.  As long as I checked out with the insurers and banks, I didn’t need any of that.”

Regina sighs, pushes the rest of the paper towards the middle of the table.  “Maybe you should look for a different job altogether.”

“Not qualified for anything else.”

“That’s not true.”

“Everything that pays enough to qualify as _providing_ for us needs school, Regina.  More school than a prison GED.”

The coffee maker chirps, and she takes the out gladly, pours them both large mugs and sweetens each appropriately.  Emma sometimes adds a splash of milk, but only on lazy days.  “You’ll find something,” Regina says, placing the mugs on the table.

“Yeah, probably,” Emma shrugs it off.  “Thanks.  We’ve got the Seton Hall tour today, right?  Or is it MKA today, Seton Hall next week?”

“No, you were right, Seton Hall.”  Regina hesitates before sitting down again.  “We don’t have to consider private schools, you know.”

Outside, one of the neighbors is yelling out their back door at a high-pitched yipping; probably the Yorkie who’d already taken a shine to Regina.  Emma takes a few quick sips of coffee, hissing when it burns her tongue.

Strange, how it’s already familiar and routine.

“I know we don’t,” Emma finally says, “but… say things work out well, and we can make the money work.  I’d rather have the knowledge and already be on their radar than have to claw to get their attention.  We’ve got the time now, might as well, right?  And besides—maybe one of these prep schools will have something that really appeals to the kid.  Every public school I’ve ever been in pretty much just swallows you whole.  He deserves better than that.  If—if we can send him someplace _good_ , I’m okay with living someplace… less good.  You know?”

They’ve both killed for Henry but it’s these things, these other sacrifices that have nothing to do with good and evil, that always catch her by surprise.  “Yes,” and Regina smiles.  “I see what you’re saying.”

And then Emma smirks, stretches her legs out a little more (are those her hips cracking?) and wiggles her toes.  “Think you could see yourself to pancakes and bacon, too?”

“Don’t test me, Miss Swan, I haven’t even had half a cup.”

 

* * *

 

After the tour and a check-in call with Henry (“I got the PS3 hooked up—Ma, come on, I just died again!”), they pull into the parking lot of a strip mall and head into a rare, non-branded coffee shop.  “I need a car,” Emma grumbles, handing the cashier a ten dollar bill.  “I hate your damn hoop-dee.”

“My car,” Regina snips, “is a classic.”

Emma snorts, takes her change and their drinks and leads them to a couch in the corner, waits for Regina to sit before handing her drink over.  “The gear shift sticks and your steering’s off.  Didn’t you get that thing serviced before we left?”

Regina tries to cover her expression with the paper cup, but it’s too late.

“Have you _ever_ gotten that thing serviced?”

She glares at Emma out of the corner of her eye.  “Twenty _eight_ years,” she hisses, “in perfect condition.  _Two_ years of actual wear and then _one_ trip with you behind the wheel and _now_ things are damaged?”

Emma should look contrite, but the expression on that scowling mouth is anything but conciliatory.  “ _One_ five hundred mile trip should not fuck a car up that much, Regina.  So that’s on _you_.”

Gritting her teeth, she looks away, takes a deep breath.  “Let’s get to the point, shall we?”

“You mean the part where we’re royally fucked?”

Across from them, some hipster in a beanie—honestly, it’s almost eighty degrees—lowers his headphones and studies them with raised eyebrows.  Regina narrows her eyes and he quickly lowers his gaze, glances up twice before she turns to look at Emma.  “Is it that bad?”

Emma sighs, draws one leg up to rest her foot on the edge of the cushion and sit her iced coffee on her knee.  Hipster’s eyes track from Emma’s “respectable” jeans to Regina’s dress, then back again.  “Yeah, it’s—it’s that bad,” Emma says softly, all her usual sarcasm gone.

She lays it out quickly, quietly.  On paper, Regina doesn’t _exist_.  All the paperwork Gold forged for Henry’s adoption describes a now forty-seven year old woman, but there’s no paper trail for the last fourteen years, and modifying the original adoption records—it’s going to be a mess.  “Be extra nice to Tony, will ya?” Emma asks with almost enough levity to seem playful.

Regina waits for the rest of it, and when Emma’s done, she sets her drink on the end table and puts her face in her hands.  Because the basic truth is that Emma is not supposed to have _any_ contact with Henry, ever, and on top of that she’s a con, and basically leaving Storybrooke was the worst thing they could have done.  Who knows how long they would’ve gone on deluding themselves, if that arrogant snit of a tour coordinator hadn’t droned on about background checks and legal documentation and health insurance and all the things they don’t have and can’t pass.

“What do we do?” Regina asks softly, and Emma, eyes glazed and focused on the hipster’s laptop, just shakes her head.

“We figure it out,” Emma murmurs, and finally looks up at Regina.  “We figure it out.”


	2. Chapter 2

Henry notices that they’re extra quiet over dinner, and when he’s loaded the dishwasher and washed a bowl of grapes to snack on, he comes and sits on the living room floor, leaning his back against Emma’s legs and tapping at Regina’s ankle with his feet.  “What happened?” he asks quietly.

He’s facing away from Emma, so he doesn’t see her shake her head at Regina, only sees Regina hold her gaze before sighing.  “The application process is very involved, Henry.  And since we’re trying to get you in for the start of ninth grade, we need to gather all the paperwork quickly.  Not knowing where we’re going to be living permanently, not knowing what our jobs will be—it’s all rather stressful, that’s all.”

It’s not a lie, just an omission.  She tells herself that three times while Henry studies her, and hates that she relaxes when Emma ruffles up Henry’s hair.  “And you know how I am about paperwork, kid.  The whole thing’s like my worst nightmare.”

“I don’t have to apply.”

Emma clicks her tongue in disapproval.  “ _You_ will do whatever you can to get the best education out there.  Anything less and you answer to me.”

They sit there long after Henry’s gone to bed, Regina stretching out on the couch with more house listings, Emma thumbing through the car manual for the Benz.  Eventually, Emma tosses the manual onto the coffee table, clears her throat.  “I’m kinda beat,” she says, juts her chin at the couch.

Regina circles another listing, pushes her glasses up her nose with the end of the marker.  “Go on up,” she says, tries to get her heartbeat to slow down again.

Emma freezes.  “Um—no, see, I sleep on the couch—“

“And it’s giving you the skeleton of a septuagenarian.”

“A _what_.”

“Seventy year old, Miss Swan.”

“You couldn’t just say that?”

“Go upstairs and let me read.”

“I’m not letting you sleep on the couch, Regina—“

“I certainly wasn’t planning on it.”

“—At least I know how to— _what_?”

Of course she’d make this drawn out and difficult.  “It’s a large bed.  Two can fit.  The left side is mine.  Keep to your side or I will remove any offending limbs and I assure you, I can do it without magic just as well as I could with it.”

Emma blinks at her.

“Good _night_ , Miss Swan.”

After a few more moments of gaping, Emma starts to move towards the stairs.  “Yeah.  Good night,” she says faintly, and slowly thumps up the stairs.

When she can hear the water in the bathroom going, Regina lets her spine soften and rests her head on the back of the couch, closes her eyes briefly.  She doesn’t—God only knows how all of this is going to work, because it’s madness, but Emma is so determined that it will, and she keeps letting these pieces of herself out into the open, and Regina can’t help but respond to that with kindness.  

_Kindness_.  She’d almost forgotten what it was called.

 

* * *

 

Emma doesn’t move when she sleeps, at all, just lies flat on her back and completely still, so on Tuesday morning when the alarm goes off, Regina quickly swipes to silence it and gets out of bed as quietly as she can, settles the sheets on her side back into place before tiptoeing out into the hall.

She misses her bedroom, and her en suite, and her _house_.  The first thing that was hers in this whole world.

But then she peeks into the other bedroom, sees Henry sprawled and drooling in the twin bed, and remembers, and remembers, and remembers.

 

* * *

 

Tony is sharp and abrupt and no-nonsense and she has him charmed in the first ten minutes of their meeting—or maybe it’s the other way around, because after twenty minutes he starts asking questions and she finds herself _wanting_ to tell him, wanting someone with more power than Emma to know how screwed they are.

They get Emma on the phone and Tony listens to the whole thing—the whole _modified_ thing, where the papers Regina used to adopt Henry were forged because she _has no papers_ and he fills in whatever blanks come to mind—and nods along, runs his fingers along his tie.  “So you need those papers adjusted to match whatever identification you rustle up, yeah?”

“Pretty much, T,” Emma says.  “I didn’t want to come to you with this because I’m already asking—“

“Shut up, Swan,” Tony snaps, and Emma goes silent on the phone.  Regina doesn’t smile, although she’s tempted.  “Idiot kid, you shoulda come to me straight.”

“And say what, T?”

Tony grunts, reaches for a pen and scribbles a few things down.  “Listen, you call Lou, he’s got a shop on Lexington and 110th, he’ll get you fresh papers.  Best in the business.”

“Tony,” Emma’s voice comes through, suddenly loud and harsh, “you are not sending her up there.”

“Swan, it’s not fuckin’ BedStuy, okay?  It’s Spanish Harlem and your old lady here will be just fine.”

“ _Tony_ ,” Emma says, just as Regina repeats, “ _Old_ _lady_?”  

Tony waves a hand as if to brush them both off.  “You get that, you come back to me, I’ll have one of my boys fix those adoption papers.”  Then he frowns, looks at her.  “Matter of fact—why don’t we just give all three of you new IDs?”

On the phone, Emma is silent, and Regina is so out of her depth with all of this—fake names and new papers are the things of spy movies and thrillers, not _her life_.

“Would it work?” Regina asks quietly, and somehow Tony knows she’s not talking to him.

“It could,” comes Emma’s voice, cautious and yet still… hopeful.  “It would take care of everything.”

“Would it—if—would it stand up?” Regina asks Tony.

To his credit, he thinks about it.  “I mean, don’t go applying to work for the Feds, but if you’re trying to keep your head down—yeah, it’ll work.”

“And for Henry?” she presses.  “For—for the future.  College.  Traveling.  He can do all of that?”

There’s the slightest flash of doubt on Tony’s face, and her stomach twists up again.  

 

* * *

 

 

Emma and Henry drive into the city and meet her down the block from Grand Central, outside a parking garage.  “What do you wanna do, kid?”

Henry squints up at the top of the MetLife building, then turns to look down Madison.  “ _Not_ shop,” he says definitively, and winks at Regina.  Just for that, she fakes a pout, but it’s startled off her face when he laughs and hugs her quickly.  “Next time, Mom.”

With a chuckle, Emma starts walking west, and Regina falls into step next to her while Henry darts ahead.  It’s only three, so it’s mostly tourists on the streets, and Regina tries to relax—because as long as he stays in sight, it’s fine.  It’s fine.

“Not too far, kid,” Emma calls, and Henry slows down, glances back and then pauses at a street artist’s set up, studying the sketches.

“Thank you,” Regina says quickly, and Emma shrugs.

“Sure.”  She sticks her fingers in her pockets, nods up at Henry.  “What do you think about Dave & Buster’s?  He’ll dig the games.”

“As will you, I’m sure.”

Emma grins, shrugs again.  It’s a very different gesture when she smiles.  “Everybody needs a little fun now and then, right?”

Regina rolls her eyes, shifts her purse to her left shoulder, opposite from Emma.  “Will they allow him in?”

“If he’s with us, yeah.  He just can’t wander off.”

“And if we need to talk privately?”

Emma glances at her, then purses her lips and whistles.  Henry, moving steadily up the line of street stalls, looks up sharply, catches sight of them and weaves his way back towards them.  

Regina hates that damn whistle.  “He’s not a dog,” she hisses.

“Nope, he’s better,” Emma says lightly, and nudges her with an elbow.  “Relax.  It’s the best way to get his attention without letting every random stranger know his name.  He knows the drill.  Just… trust me.”

Regina blinks at her, surprised again, always surprised by how quickly Emma’s adapted to _child_ and _city_ and _cohabitation_.

Henry pops up in front of them, bouncing with energy.  “Yeah?”

“How ‘bout a ‘Yes, Ma’?” Emma drawls, and when Henry shoots her a scornful look, she wraps an arm around his shoulders and ruffles his hair, then turns him to walk between them.  “We’re thinking Dave & Buster’s for food, but first your mom and I have to sort out some things.  So we’re just gonna chill… right here, actually.”  She points to the right, and Regina realizes that they’re right next to the library.

“Cool!  Can I go in?”

They both smile, because that’s Henry.  “Sure,” Regina agrees.  “Let’s go in.”

Inside, they all head into the exhibition space off the main entrance, and while Henry’s pressing his face to the glass over some illuminated manuscript, Regina quietly says, “We can’t do it for Henry.”

“Why not?”

“Because Tony can’t guarantee it will hold up when he’s ready for college.  Or a passport.  Or anything bigger than here and now.”

Emma’s shoulders drop, and she leans against a blank wall, lowers her chin and closes her eyes.  “And if we can’t do it for him, then we still need to modify the adoption.”

“And if we can’t do it for him, then we can’t do it for you, either.”

Emma frowns, and then suddenly stiffens, eyes narrowing in anger.  “What, so the only person to get a fresh start is you?” she sneers.

Regina takes a step back, tries to ignore the fact that she’s more hurt than surprised.  “No,” she returns, calm as she can.  “Because if you change your identity, you have no ties to him.  I’m the only person on those adoption papers, Emma.  You’d be… what?  Some random woman in his life?  We wouldn’t be able to put you down as—as _anything_.  You would be _nothing_ to him.”

She wants Emma to ignore the fact that her voice is shaking, that the idea of severing Henry-and-Emma makes her _nauseous_ , but she knows Emma won’t.  “And—and you don’t want that?” Emma asks, soft and scared.

She stays silent, watches Henry move among display cases with grace that won’t last through his next growth spurt.

“Okay,” Emma says, and reaches out for Regina, takes her wrist and pulls her a little closer.  “Except—as is, I can’t be anything to him, either.  Not legally.”

“If we’re already going in to change the adoption papers—“

“We’re changing _your_ end.  My end is still out there and in the federal penitentiary system.  Tony’s guys are good, but they won’t want to touch those.”

“So what do we do?” Regina asks, and lets Emma keep three fingers pressed to the pulse point in her wrist.

“I don’t know,” Emma sighs.  “I really don’t know.”

 

* * *

 

She knows Emma isn’t asleep, and she knows Emma knows she’s not asleep, and her throat is scratchy from the two vodka tonics she’d had with dinner, and every time Emma lets out a soft _snuff_ Regina feels her heart hammer hard against her ribs.

“I have an idea,” Emma whispers.

Regina turns her head to look at her.  The streetlight filtering through the window hits Emma’s eyes at just the right angle to make them seem almost clear, completely unearthly.

“You’re gonna hate it,” Emma adds, and gives her a weak smile.


	3. Chapter 3

On Thursday afternoon, they drive into the city and Henry’s content to sit with his DS in the conference room of Tony’s office while some kid with boxy glasses and more facial piercings than Regina’s ever seen up close whips up a brand new version of her fake birth certificate.

“You sure about this?” Tony asks.

Regina lifts her eyes from the work surface where the kid—who’s apparently twenty-something and goes by Chivo—is applying a coating to age the paper.  Emma’s looking right at her with a completely unreadable emotion in her eyes, but her mouth is, for once, not curving down.  “Keeps everything simple and true,” she says.  “Simple is good.”  And then Emma smiles at her, bright and genuine.  

“Simple is good,” Regina echoes, and tries to smile back.

When it’s done, Emma hands Tony a thick envelope, which is immediately handed off to Chivo, who salutes them smugly and swaggers out of the room.  Tony looks between the two of them, shakes his head.  “Never thought I’d see the day,” he starts.

The petulant frown on Emma’s face is almost amusing.  “Shut up.”

“Emma freakin’ Swan, hardass—“

“ _Tony_ ,” she snaps.  “We haven’t run it by the kid, yet.”

Tony just chuckles.  “Well, hurry up.  I gotta tell everybody you ever met.”

“Asshole,” Emma laughs, and gives him a hug.  “Thanks, T.”

“Yeah, kid,” he replies gruffly, and then turns to Regina with his arms still open.  “Well?” he prompts, and she tries to smile, gingerly steps forward.

“She doesn’t really do physical contact,” Emma says quickly, stepping forward with a hand out as if to stop Regina, but Tony’s already pulled her into a bear hug.

It’s not completely objectionable.  Only mostly so.

Tony releases her quickly, but keeps his face close to hers long enough to say, “You fuck with her, I end you.  Understand?”

She’s fairly certain she’s never seen anyone look as bewildered as he does when she laughs right in his face.

 

* * *

 

Before they rejoin Henry in the conference room, Emma grabs her by the elbow and tugs her back around the corner to a smaller meeting room, closes the door behind them.  “Look—Regina, listen—I—“

She’d known something was up when Emma didn’t sing on the drive in.  “Second thoughts?” she prompts, and hates how _tired_ she sounds.

But she is tired.  Five days of this sudden and overwhelming anxiety, this idea that it was all for _nothing_ , and she’s just… tired.  Wants it to be settled and done and _moving_ again.

Emma takes a step forward, shaking her head.  “No—no.  This is—this is simple, and it fixes everything, literally everything, and it means I never—it means—this whole thing, Regina, it means _everything_ to me.  That you’d…”

“That he would really be yours?” Regina fills in, and she’s trying but she can’t get her voice to cooperate.  Can’t fake it, not just yet.

Those sea-bright eyes are shining at her.  “Ours,” Emma corrects.  “Yours and mine.”

There it is again, that determination to make this work.  To make this _good_.  “What is it, then?” she asks, and finally her voice is as strong and brisk as she wants it to be.

“I don’t want—I don’t want to be trapping you into this.  I don’t… You don’t deserve that.  I don’t want you to think that there are… are expectations of you, or—or—“

From the way Emma is starting to take deeper breaths, Regina can tell she’s winding up to give some type of speech—which usually resembles more of a babble that culminates in a single thought, but the general term would be speech—and waves a hand to cut her off.  “Regardless of the surface similarities to—“ and she chokes a little.  “To my previous circumstances,” she settles on, and pauses, waits for her lungs to open again.  “We both love Henry, and we both want to be in his life as his mothers.  We are _both_ entering into this arrangement for his benefit, and we are both fully aware of… the situation.”

Emma watches her closely, looking for even the slightest sign that—what?  She can’t say she _wants_ to do this, but can’t say she doesn’t, either.  “You are not the king,” Regina says softly, “and Henry is not a strange child on a horse, and no one has died to bring us to this point.  Do you understand me?”

Slowly, slowly, Emma nods.  “I just—I wanted to be sure.  That you—I wanted to be sure,” she falters.

It takes a moment for her body to obey the impulse, but Regina manages to reach out and take Emma’s hand, squeeze twice.  “Simple and true,” she repeats, and Emma nods again.  “Good.”  And then—because Emma’s eyes are bright, bright, bright—she cracks a smile, and adds, “An August wedding, right?  I think you’d be a lovely summer bride.”

 

* * *

 

They tell Henry while eating dinner in a cafe across from a rather obnoxiously signed jewelry shop, and he laughs at them.

When he realizes that they’re serious, he lowers his panini and looks between the two of them with his mouth hanging open slightly.  “ _Seriously_?” he screeches.

Regina nudges him with her elbow.  “Behave,” she warns, and then steals a chip from his open bag.  “And yes.  Seriously.”

Across the table, Emma nods, and Henry’s gape morphs to a vaguely disgusted face.  “Is this why Emma hasn’t been sleeping on the couch?” he stage-whispers, and looks as if he might actually vomit.

She’d never considered—oh, God.  It’s been four years but maybe he still—if he’s still holding onto _Evil Queen_ and _Savior_ and of course he is, it was the truth, why wouldn’t he—

“Oh, my God, my moms are having sex, I need _bleach_ ,” Henry whines.

Emma reaches out across the table and gently swats Henry on the ear.  “Quit it, drama queen,” she reprimands.

“So you _are_?” he asks, and shakes his head.  “Nope.  Nope.  Didn’t need that image, didn’t need to know, you couldn’t just say _dating_ like normal people?”

The air rushes back into her lungs so quickly that she gets faintly dizzy.  Emma is looking at her with the slightest furrow of concern to her brows, and a hint of uncertainty in her eyes.  Regina understands right away, because Henry’s giving them an out they hadn’t even realized they had.

She doesn’t want it, though.  Feigning constant marital bliss for the sake of a child—even one she genuinely loves—isn’t something she’s capable of anymore.  “No, Henry,” she says quietly, and tries to make sure Emma sees that she’s okay, that she can do this.  “We’re not… involved.”

Now his frown comes in, exactly like Emma’s.  Emma’s said, repeatedly, that his scowl is Regina’s own, but the frown—the downward curving mouth, the pinch at the bridge of his nose—is all Emma.  “But you’re getting married.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand.”

She lets Emma explain the technicalities, the paperwork, the way it all becomes _the truth_ with a twist if they just do this one little thing.  The way it means no one can ever break up their weird little family.  “It doesn’t have to be forever,” Emma adds.  “Until you’re eighteen, maybe.  Or earlier, if your mom gets sick of me faster than we’ve planned for.”

Regina smiles at that, but Henry doesn’t.  He sinks into his seat, picks up his panini and takes a few bites in contemplative silence.  They both watch him anxiously, wait while he sips his lemonade and puts his sandwich down again.  “So… you and Mom get married, and you can adopt me, and then we’re—we’re a real family?”

There’s something in his voice, something light and pitched at his ten-year-old lilt.  “A real family,” Emma echoes.  “Legal and everything.”

“And—and nobody can split us up?  Nobody gets left?”

It hits between her lungs with enough force to leave her breathless, but she recovers long before Emma does, scoots her chair close to Henry’s and hugs him close to her.  “Nobody gets left, sweetheart,” she murmurs, and presses a kiss to his hair.  “Nobody gets left.”

She can feel when his whole body relaxes into her, when he hugs back in earnest, and she takes the chance to look over at Emma.  Emma, _good_ Emma, who looks as though she’s on the verge of crumbling into dust—

Regina stretches a hand out to her, keeps their eyes locked, and when Emma finally takes her hand—shaking, shaking, shaking—she and Henry both pull her in tight, hold onto her while she shivers all her emotions out.

“Nobody leaves, either,” Emma finally whispers, and pulls back to hold Henry’s face in her hands, makes him look right into her eyes.  “You hear me?  Nobody leaves.  You go, we come after you.  That’s how it goes, okay?”

Henry nods, and he’s tearing up, but he says the words anyway.  “Where you go, we go,” he murmurs, and says it again.  “I know, Ma.  I know.”

He hasn’t had to say it in a month or so—not since Emma first floated the idea of _we can leave, we can be safe, we can just… go_.  But it’s just as solid as the first time, just as solid as when Emma said it to her on the porch of her house with a Budget truck pamphlet and a desperate glow in her eyes.

“Can I pick your rings?” Henry asks, voice muffled in Emma’s shoulder, and Regina can’t help but laugh at him, kiss his temple again.

“Sure, sweetheart,” she agrees.  “You can pick our rings.”

 

* * *

 

 

In bed that night, Regina lays on her side to face Emma and takes a deep breath, steels herself.  “What are you going to tell your parents?”

To her surprise, Emma snorts.  “Absolutely nothing.”  It’s silent for a good minute before Emma turns her head to look at Regina, eyes dark and serious.  “You know how those phone calls go with things as is.  I tell them this, they’ll do something really stupid like have the Blue Fairy summon us back or, I don’t know, hire a hitman to take you out.”

Regina opens her mouth to counter the hitman idea, then concedes that yes, if anything were ever to prompt Snow White to _actually_ kill her, it’d be marrying Emma.  “I don’t want Henry to have to lie for us.”

“It was his idea.”  Emma nods, tries to smile but fails.  “He said he’s tired of his relatives killing each other and thinks it would be in everyone’s best interest if we just… kept this to ourselves.  To life here.”

Regina closes her eyes, lets _his relatives killing each other_ echo in her head endlessly.  “Are we doing the right thing for him?” she whispers, and when Emma’s hand finds hers under the blankets, she grips it strongly.

“Well, it’s not easy, so it can’t be wrong, can it?” Emma whispers back, and holds on.


	4. Chapter 4

Everything starts to fall into place at a speed that honestly terrifies Regina.  It’s not like the first time, she _knows_ it’s not, but this breakneck speed—it feels like before.  It feels so much like before.

Except this time around, she has control over things.  Not absolute control, but reasonable amounts.  Like when Tony says he can grease the wheels if Emma wants to try the county sheriff’s department, they talk about it.  Weigh out the pros and cons, and the risks, and when Emma mumbles, “It’d be a good gig, but if you don’t want me to do it, just say the word,” when they’re both awake at three in the morning, Regina knows she means it.  If Regina says no, Emma will pass on it.

“Do you want it?” she asks quietly, turning onto her side to look at Emma.

The light coming in through the window makes the shy grin Emma gives her oddly ethereal.  “I kind of miss saving the day,” she admits, and Regina feels that heavy hammering against her ribs again.  “And having a gun,” Emma adds, and Regina rolls her eyes and turns away.

“The benefits are good,” she says over her shoulder.  “Especially the health insurance.  We should get Henry on your policy.”

“Yeah, that sounds good,” Emma says, and Regina can hear the smile in her voice.

 

* * *

 

House-hunting is almost a full time job.

“What about the cheesecake ones?”

Emma is starting to look out of place in the passenger seat, and Regina almost kills them twice because she hasn’t adjusted her sideview mirrors back to her own settings.  “The what ones?” And then, with far more interest, “I’m taking a right on what?”

“Bellevue Terrace.  The cheesecake ones.  Like—that.”  Emma points to a Tudor on the corner and Regina almost misses the turn.

They pull up between a ranch house and another Tudor, and Regina takes her time getting out of the car to try and figure out what the hell Emma means by _cheesecake_ —

And when she sees it, when it clicks, she actually laughs.  “We can look at some of those, too.”

“Not today, though.”

She shakes her head and joins Emma on the sidewalk, eyes the other people drifting towards the ranch.  Open houses leave a nasty taste in her mouth.  “Not today.  And realtors call them Tudors.”

A small sound of acknowledgement comes from Emma; she’s assessing the other viewers, too, with her arms crossed over her chest and her eyebrows lowered harshly.  “Good to know.”

Something about her body language—maybe the distance between her feet—makes Regina hold her position instead of walking up the path.  “What are you thinking?” she asks quietly, and leans against the side of the car.

It takes Emma a few seconds to come out of her defensive stance, but her fingers stay locked around the cuffs of the blazer she borrowed.  “Sometimes I hate that we don’t even have to put much into performing.”  Four horrible heartbeats where Regina doesn’t know where Emma’s taking this, why she’s saying this now—and then she continues.  “That most of the time people get so uncomfortable by just the idea that…”

Regina sighs, steps up to stand next to Emma.  “Think of it as a litmus test,” she murmurs, and smoothes down a stray blonde strand of hair.  “Anywhere we need to put in _more_ is a place we want to be.”

Emma’s harsh and heavy frown lightens, and she smiles just enough, and when they walk into the house with their hands laced together, there’s a change in Emma’s shoulders.  It’s different from the other open houses, where the inevitable cooling of the amiable atmosphere made her buckle under some unseen weight.  This time, she puts her shoulders back, and gives Regina a small genuine smile, and leads them over to the sign-in book.

 

* * *

 

Two days later, one of the headhunters calls at an ungodly hour and says the Javitz Center needs an emergency fill-in, can Regina get to the city today.  The job is fun—just managing a trade exhibition, keeping track of the different vendors and presentations—and not too mentally taxing, but apparently she’s something of a rarity in terms of aptitude for it because at the end of the sixteen-hour day, her immediate supervisor offers her a permanent position.

“I’d like a few days to think it over, talk it over with—“ and she stops, hesitates.  “With my family,” she hedges, and continues.  “We’re still trying to figure things out, but this… could be a really good thing, I think.”

By the time her train pulls into the neighborhood station, she’s exhausted and her feet hurt and so does her lower back and two blocks seems like forever, but when she comes down the steps from the platform, Emma’s leaning against the passenger door of the Benz with flats in one hand and a lily in the other and that particular dumb-happy grin.  “Hey, killer,” she says, and it sounds obscenely loud in the ten pm quiet of the suburbs.  “Need a lift?”

She puts the lily in a glass of water on her nightstand and manages to remove the written offer from her bag before shucking her skirt suit in five smooth movements and crawling into bed in just her undergarments.  She’s already face down in the pillow when she hears Emma come in, chuckle, and start to move around the room, putting Regina’s purse in its usual place next to the dresser and picking her clothes up off the floor.

She just barely hears Emma say, “So that’s where you put it,” before she’s completely out.

 

* * *

 

Emma’s leg is shaking.

Regina wants to reach out and grab her knee and _stop her_ , but Henry is sitting between them, looking over the house listings with far more interest than Emma.  Across from them, the real estate agent— _call me Gigi_ —adjusts her smile.  “There’s a huge finished basement on this one,” Gigi drones, dragging out her vowels.  “Easily convertible into whatever you’d want—what are you into, sweetheart?  Video games?”

Henry raises his eyes without moving a muscle.  “Not really.”

Emma’s leg stills for a moment, and their eyes meet over his head.  Just a quick look, the barest hint of a smirk on both their faces, before Regina reaches out and smooths the hair at the nape of Henry’s neck.  It’s getting a little shaggy; he needs a cut.  “No, not this one,” she says coolly, and feels Henry tense as he slides the folder back across the coffee table.  “Like I said, we’d prefer something in—“

The dull thwap of more folders hitting the table cuts her off.  “Oh, honey, I _know_ , but you all are new around here.  Jersey’s a lot more subtle than—“

“I know Jersey,” Emma snaps, voice flat.  “So these last five houses you’ve laid out? Irvington, the Oranges. Bloomfield. She gave you three basic criteria and you just threw them all out the window.”

“Emma—“

“No,” Emma cuts her off, and Henry shrinks into the curve of Regina’s arm.  “Good public schools, direct train line to the city, friendly downtown district.  That’s it.  That’s all we’re looking for.  What is so goddamn complicated about that?”

“My job,” Gigi sneers, and Regina bites back a sigh, “is to combine the things you’re looking for with the things you don’t know to think about—“

“Talk to us like we’re ignorant one more time, lady.”

Slowly, slowly, Regina stretches her hand past Henry’s shoulder to touch Emma’s elbow.  Emma doesn’t jerk away from the contact but she doesn’t shift her glare.  “Look, it’s been a long afternoon—“

“You _do not know_ what I know.  That’s why I’m the agent,” Gigi bursts out, and Henry lowers his chin to his chest, sighs heavily.  “I know these neighborhoods, I know where you’ll fit—“

“Fit?” Regina echoes, and out of the corner of her eye sees Emma’s shoulders start to loosen.  “What do you mean, _fit_?”

 

* * *

 

The only alcohol in the house are the last two Blue Moons, and Regina hands one off to Emma and joins her on the front steps.  There’s still a hazy line of pink on the horizon, even though it’s well past eight.  She gets through half her beer before the words tumble out of her.  “They’re all going to be like that, aren’t they?”

“Pretty much.”  Emma takes two long pulls, lets her head loll backwards.

“You know it wasn’t just the ‘lesbians’ part.”

Air whistles over the bottle top as Emma sucks in a breath.  “Yeah, it was the white trash _plus_ Spanish _plus_ lesbians part.”

Regina lets the misnomer slide, just this once, chews at the inside of her lower lip until she thinks she has words in the right order.  “If this is how you’re going to react every time someone takes you to be something you’re not—“

“Save it.”  Emma’s bottle—three quarters empty—taps against the metal edging of the step.  “I don’t give a fuck about what some Brooklyn-reject Umbridge wannabe thinks I am.  I’ve been taken for a hell of a lot worse than a classless gay mom.  But her bullshit fucks with our kid.”

It takes a long time for her to finish her beer, and she acknowledges—to herself only—that it’s not terrible, as beers go.  “We’ll do it ourselves, then.”

When she looks up, Emma’s openly staring.  “We don’t—“

“We know what we want.  You know how to find things and I know how to bend people.  We’ll do it ourselves.”

Slowly, slowly, Emma smiles.

 

* * *

 

They find a house three days before their appointment at the registrar’s office and one week before Emma’s Academy prep weekend.  It’s a simple Colonial, beautiful maroon siding, three bedrooms, and it’ll need some work—she’s not satisfied with the front steps, and Emma squints at the screened-in back porch and taps the framing meaningfully—but it’s in range of the magnet middle school and a block from a different train stop, the backyard is completely fenced in, all the kitchen appliances are brand new and the master bedroom is painted a pale gold that makes her feel oddly hopeful, about everything.

Henry actually cares that the basement is finished and thinks the staircase, all dark-stained walnut and lit up by a double story stained glass window, is just plain beautiful.

The owners—retiring to Florida—seem to prefer dealing directly with buyers and not agents and, over two afternoon teas, Regina charms June while Emma casually edges into Dennis’s good graces and Henry basks in proxy-grandparental attention.  They manage to close (with the lawnmower and snowblower thrown in for a pittance) an hour before they go down to the municipal building and accept and sign the license, and then the only judge not in court for the day looks between the two of them and grunts, “By the power vested in me, I pronounce you… ahem. Married.”

And then it’s done.  Emma’s in jeans.  Regina’s makeup is limited to eyeliner and lipstick.  Henry—miffed that he’s not an acceptable witness—is buried in a Hulk hoodie.  They have a home, and two good jobs, and Henry will be enrolled in the magnet school by close of business on Tuesday, and they’re married.

Before they leave, Regina picks up the forms for adoption through marriage and rifles through them while they head out to the car.  “It’s going to take a lot of processing time, especially because of the—error with my birth date,” she says, “we should probably start these—“

She walks straight into Emma, who just laughs and sets her back two steps, takes the papers from her.  “Do me a favor?”  Emma nods to Henry, who holds out their rings—two identical platinum bands, with a triple milgrain design in the center.  They’re thin, delicate enough for Regina to want to wear hers, heavy enough for Emma to feel comfortable with hers.  Henry chose well.  “Put one of those on me?”

Regina wants to say something snippy about idiotic pointless romantic gestures, but Henry’s smile is infectious and bright, bright, bright, so she wordlessly picks up one of the rings—identically sized—and slides it onto Emma’s ring finger, pleased that it goes on easily but stays put.  Emma flexes her hand, looks at the ring with that one unreadable emotion in her eyes, then winks at Henry like there wasn’t just a moment of _something else_ and picks up the remaining ring, holds it up and waits for Regina’s hand.

It’s not like before.  Not at all.  Before she could only think of Daniel’s death-pale face and of the ten different ways she’d imagined killing Snow White.  Before, she could only think of the mirror shattering as she pushed her mother through.

This time, she’s standing in warm summer sunlight with her son at her side, and Emma, with the sun glinting off of her eyes and her curls, smiles when the ring settles at the base of her finger.  “Good rings,” is all Emma says, and Regina can go with that.

“Very good,” she agrees, and hugs Henry close to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> N.B. Regina is not "Spanish." Regina is Latina. Being from the area that I've transplanted this little family to, I can assure you that incorrectly conflating "Spanish," "Hispanic" and "Latina" is a widespread and deeply-ingrained phenomenon among non-Latinx people.


	5. Chapter 5

Shopping for furniture turns into a fight before they even get in the car.

“Absolutely not.”

“Jesus Christ, Regina, could you for twelve seconds _not_ be a prissy—“

“ _Ma_.”

Emma snaps her jaw shut and Regina feels the sneer on her face before she can help it.  “I’m just saying, _we don’t have the money_.  And there’s nothing wrong—“

“It is bad enough that I’m required to live in a secondhand _house_ —“

“You _do_ realize that half the value of the house is because—“

“I _will not_ subject my son to hand-me-down furniture!”

“For the record,” Henry sighs from the backseat, “I totally don’t care either way.”

“You,” Regina starts, and then bites her tongue, reins in her tone, “just want to go to Ikea and be done with it.”

He grins, wide and just slightly mischievous.  “It’s a huge giant _playground_ , Mom.”

“A giant playground made of compressed sawdust.”

“Missing the point, Regina,” Emma mutters, and shoots her a quick glare.

She sighs, knows it sounds more than a little irritated.  “Fine.  We will go to Ikea _once_ , Henry.  And I make no promises to purchase anything.”

“You know they sell 17-packs of tupperware for like, three bucks, right?”

Regina gapes.  “Is that legal?”

“It’s awesome.”

“Can I get a loft bed?” Henry asks, and Regina stifles her intended jab at Emma’s completely predictable dismissal of legality.

“Yes,” Emma says.

“No,” Regina overrules.

“Mooooom.”

“Didn’t you just say that we don’t have the money?” Regina throws at Emma, who rolls her eyes.  “Any _solidly made_ loft bed will cost—“

“Unless we do what I’ve been saying for three days and _buy secondhand_.  Look, there’s this huge place over in Elizabeth, you can find _anything_ , just—“

“I said no.”

“Jesus Christ.  All I’m asking is for you to look _beyond_ fucking West Elm and Pottery Barn.  It’s not like I’m asking you to buy a used mattress!”

She pinches the bridge of her nose as Emma swings a left to the onramp for the Parkway.  “If that was an actual thought in your mind, I want a divorce.”

The car is dead silent for twenty seconds, and then Henry snickers.  “Did you just make a _joke_ , Mom?”

“Quiet, Henry, or you’ll end up with a sawdust bed.”

 

* * *

 

 

Delivery times.  Queen and Mayor and thwarted from _good taste_ by delivery times.

The place in Elizabeth is essentially a warehouse of used furniture, and when she stops glaring at the back of Emma’s head in hopes that she might manage one last fireball, she starts to notice that there are some quality wood pieces scattered amongst the vaguely sorted array of furniture.  Henry’s having a blast, digging up some of the most garish pieces—turquoise-painted metal picture frames, for one—just to see her reaction, lingering with sideways glances to both her and Emma in front of a few things that he might actually like.

“Make you a deal,” Emma says quietly, coming up on her right.  “We’ll get you your fancy-pants furniture for your room, and until it shows up, you can take mine and I’ll do the air mattress thing, or something.”

“We don’t have the money,” Regina sighs, and is just as surprised as Emma when she doesn’t sound sullen and bitter.

“Credit cards were invented for a reason, right?”

“We have to be careful.”

“A couple hundred bucks—“ and Regina grimaces at the gross underestimation.  “Did I just get myself into something _really_ dumb?”

“Are you surprised?” she returns, and Emma hisses _shit_ under her breath.

 

* * *

 

 

They managed to pick a neighborhood with genuinely friendly people.  As soon as the moving and delivery trucks leave on Wednesday, the doorbell rings, and Emma opens it to reveal two families, each bearing large Tupperware containers.

Regina tries to flee into the kitchen, but she’s not quite fast enough; Emma calls out for her within a minute.  “Regina!  Neighbors!  They brought food!”  There’s a pause, and then Emma adds with obvious delight, “They brought brownies!  Can we keep ‘em?”

“The brownies or the people, dear?” Regina asks dryly, and wipes her hands on the rag hanging from Emma’s back pocket, extends a hand to the first woman in the bunch.  “Regina Mills.  Great to meet you.”

She doesn’t actually process names, but manages to figure out that the bottle-made redhead with the meathead husband and identical meathead son lives two houses down and across the street, while the family of five lives right across the street.  There are eight strangers in their brand-new, bare-bones furnished house, and she’s wearing one of Emma’s tank tops and her only pair of jeans, and honestly, she’d like them all to go far, far away.  And leave the brownies.

But then Henry thunders down the stairs, pausing on the landing when he realizes Meathead Jr. is sitting blocking the final set of steps.  He’s still polite, though, and leans over the railing, waves to everyone.  “Hi.  I’m Henry.  Who’re you?”  They go through the names again—the woman across the street is named Liz, she catches this time around—and it seems that Liz’s rather reticent son is the same age as Henry and going to the magnet school already.

A few more minutes of chit-chat, she thinks, and then they’ll go, and then Meathead Jr. turns to Henry and says, “If you have two moms with two last names, whose last name do you go with?  Like, who’s the man?”

Emma clenches her fists and locks her jaw and takes a step forward but Regina moves quickly, slides an arm around her waist and pinches, subtly, in warning.  Emma doesn’t relax but at least stays still, long enough for both of them to watch Henry frown down at Meathead Jr. and cross his arms.

“They’re both my moms, so I go by Swan-Mills,” he says clearly.  “And _I’m_ the man.”

For a brief moment, Regina actually feels sick.  For fourteen years, he’s been Henry Mills, her own purest thing, and now—

And now Emma grins, sly and sharp, and tightens her grip on Regina’s hand, squeezes hard and shoots her a look of such fierce happiness that all the nausea melts away.  “He’s the man, he says,” Emma chuckles, and wraps her right arm around Regina in turn, hooks two fingers into the belt loop on her far hip and pulls her in close.  “When was the last time you took out the garbage, Mr. Man?”

Henry’s frown morphs into a playful scowl.  “Same as the last time you cooked,” he sasses back, to everyone’s amusement.

Regina snickers, bites her lower lip to hold in the actual laugh that wants out; he might go by Swan-Mills, but oh, he’ll always be hers.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obligatory bad-teen-rom-com scene. Not even a little bit sorry.

It’s their third night in the house before Regina gets the chance to go to bed without being completely worn out, and after the first two minutes that she spends laying in bed, relishing the luxury of being _alone_ again, she lets her hands slip down between her thighs and press once, twice, just to check.

She hasn’t had sex in three years and hasn’t been able to _self-care_ in three months, and some mornings she would wake up with the barest bit of skin-to-skin contact and _want_ with irritating urgency.  Not that she wanted Emma, per se, but just… a human touch.  

The most accurate way to put it is this: she wants to be wanted.  Desired.  Wants to be arched like a bow and brought to orgasm with ferocity.

The very small box with her two vibrators has yet to turn up among the boxes of her things, so she bites her lip and slips her right hand beneath her underwear, tries to clear her mind and focus just on the physical sensation of fingers stroking up her labia, brushing idly over her clit.  It’s always hardest for her with just hands; she’s always needed something _extra_ , something not herself, for those moments when that clear space in her mind collapses in under the weight of all the thoughts kept at bay and no amount of sensation can block out guilt and shame and fear and—

_No_.  None of that.

She takes a deep breath, returns her focus to her fingers, to spreading the steadily increasing slickness up over her lips, to intermittently rubbing quick, tight circles over her clit, dragging the edge of her thumb nail over it gently.  It doesn’t even have to be a _good_ orgasm, just an orgasm, just something to take the edge off, something to calm her down and say that yes, she can do this, she’ll get through all of this insanity—

_Damn it_.  She pauses, bites down on the inside of her cheek in frustration, because of course even masturbating would be complicated now.

With a low hiss, Regina switches to her left hand, wiping the fingers of her right hand on the inside of her underwear before hooking her thumb over the waistband of her pants and starting to tug them down and then oh, _God_.

She freezes, eyes wide open, and very, very slowly, shifts her left hand again, feels the cool heavy metal of her wedding ring slide over her now-decently-swollen clit, the indentations of the milgrain design scraping it just right, and no, no no no, but she does it again and actually gasps when she feels something burn down the inside of both legs.  

Her _wedding ring_.  She doesn’t want this—can’t let this happen, but her body’s already accepted this as the next best thing, and her left hand’s settled against her body, cupped over her mound, shifting just slightly in each direction and alternating the pressure and weight of her ring finger, and God, it’s _so fucking good_.  She can’t remember the last time she was this wet for herself, can’t remember the last time she was able to slide two fingers into herself from the start and so easily, she’s _so wet_.

Both hands, now, and fast with the fingers of her right hand, or as fast as she can manage, which isn’t so fast at all because some part of her that keeps screaming _wedding ring married to Emma wedding ring_ is trying to pull her back from this.  But her left—ring finger curled and sideways, flicking at nothing to shift the ring in fast and random patterns—she’s gone, she’s fucked, she’s fucking herself harder than she ever has because her wedding ring—her _wedding ring_ , her married-to-Emma godforsaken wedding ring—

Her climax comes quickly and sharply, burning through the muscles of her lower body like a flash fire, and she pulls her whole lower lip into her mouth and bites down on the skin beneath it, stifles the—scream? moan? _words_?—sounds rising from her throat so that all that escapes her is a low-pitched, smothered whine.

She lays there, breathless and stunned, until she finally realizes that her hands are still in her underwear, and said underwear is soaked and getting uncomfortable.  She wipes her fingers on the inside waistband again and then throws back the sheets to get fresh pajamas.  And probably wash the ring.

Definitely wash the ring.  Definitely, definitely wash the ring.

 

* * *

 

 

On Thursday, there’s an office-wide staff meeting to prep for the center-wide meeting next week.  They’ll have to present the major clients for the next year, highlight blackout weeks and make the general minutia of the Center seem interesting, so Regina heads into the meeting with a full accordion folder of client proposals, weekly calendars and a notepad to take down whatever “don’t forgets” come up during brainstorming.  Balancing all of that plus her specialty coffee that she’d actually gone all the way down to 23rd street to get doesn’t go well, and when she has to choose between the organized folder and the coffee, she chooses the coffee.

Rita, the group admin assistant, takes her coffee into the conference room for her, and another pair of hands joins her in picking up the printouts.  “You’re the new girl, right?” comes a particularly edgy drawl, and she looks up at _girl_ because really, she’s physically thirty seven and nobody would call her _girl_ to look at her.

But then the man actually looks at her and seems to forget that he’d said anything at all while he looks her up and down and up again.  “Regina Mills,” she says stiffly, and shifts her papers to her left hand, extends her right for him to shake.  “Are you the stockroom boy?”

He gets the hint; no one would look at his tailored suit and think anything but account exec.  “Sorry,” he apologizes, and seems to mean it.  “Almost all the new employees are in their twenties, and—well, a generation is a difference, right?”

And then he smiles, and she falters, because that’s Daniel’s smile.  This man isn’t Daniel—taller, thinner, about twenty shades darker, less pointed features and far too much care taken for the scruff on his face—but that smile, the way it stretches more to the right than the left, the spread of his lips…

“I’m Mark, by the way,” he says.  “Mark Garriga.  Client services.”

Regina blinks, comes back to herself.  “Services?” she repeats, and smirks.  “Good.  Be serviceable and put the packets you picked up in chronological order, would you?”

She turns on her heel and walks into the conference room without waiting for his reaction, but she’s pleased to hear him laugh and follow her to the far end of the table.

 

* * *

 

 

The Macalusos—the family of five across the street—throw an annual Labor Day barbecue and Henry gets along well enough with their boy Matthew, so he accepts the invitation for the entire family and promises that Regina will bring a pie.  A pie, singular, because whenever Regina makes pies she makes two, and apparently being a schemer is both nature and nurture.

It’s in the mid-80s and the Macalusos’ pool is full of children and teenagers and Matthew pulls Henry over to join in, leaving Regina and Emma hovering awkwardly at the side stairs to the deck for a good two minutes before Liz spots them and waves them over, greets them both with air kisses to one cheek.  “Come join the girls,” she says, taking the pie out of Regina’s hands.

Emma’s eyes pop slightly, and she hangs back slightly.  “Uh—it’s banana cream, should be refrigerated.  Point me?” she stutters out quickly, and takes the pie back.

“Coward,” Regina murmurs, but makes no greater fuss and follows Liz across the deck to a large circle of hairspray and spray tans.

“Ladies, this is Regina.  She just moved in across the street, the Comascos old place, with her wife and son,” Liz calls out, and all of a sudden there are at least ten pairs of eyes on her.

She puts on her best mayor smile and sits in the chair Liz points out to her, between the redhead from that first day and an intimidatingly busty brunette in a sundress not so dissimilar to Regina’s own.  “Did you bring the family, honey?” Redhead coos at her.

God, this is going to be torture.  “Of course.  Emma went to put the pie away and Henry’s with all the kids.”  She’s positioned with her back to the intersection of the house wall and the deck railing, able to see Henry as he laughingly pushes his wet hair back from his face and jumps for the beach ball some of the boys are tossing around.

“Oh, which one is Henry?”

Regina points, can’t suppress a smile when he sees her and waves brightly.  “The one with the farmer’s tan and the smile,” she says, and gets a chuckle from a few of the women.

“He sees you pointing and he doesn’t pretend he doesn’t know you?”  The question comes from one of the only women in the group to look vaguely natural, reddish-brown hair tied back in a ponytail and freckles sprayed across her cheeks and collarbones.  “What’s your secret?”

“The usual,” she says dryly.  “Threats of murder, mayhem, eternal mortification.”

“Don’t forget my cooking,” comes Emma’s voice, and Regina turns to watch her make her way behind the curve of chairs to squeeze in behind Regina’s, lean over and hand her a tumbler full of clear liquid, lime and ice.  “I cook, we all starve.  Keeps him in line.”  She winks at Regina, shoots her a quick smile.  “Vodka tonic for the lady,” she explains, and Regina has to smile at that.

“You’re not that bad,” she returns, and when Emma raises an eyebrow with a _Really?_ implicit in the expression, adds, “Not that there isn’t room for improvement.”

Emma rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling, and looks at the circle of women with the smile still tugging at her mouth.  “Hi.  I’m Emma, the undomesticated wife.”

More chuckles, but Regina sees Emma inching backwards, clearly ready to retreat with her beer and leave Regina to the wolves.  “Come sit, _honey_ ,” Regina urges, and smirks when Emma’s eyes flash at her.

“No room, babe, I don’t want to put anyone out,” Emma returns easily, taking a step back. 

Busty Brunette comes to the rescue.  “Here, have mine—I’ve gotta redo Annie’s sunscreen, anyway.”

Emma fixes a smile on her face and says, “Thank you” as prettily as she can.  Regina smirks, takes a sip of her drink to cover it up and keeps the glass in front of her face to cover her dismay when Emma scoots the chair right up next to her and drapes her right arm across the back of Regina’s chair.  “How’s the drink?” Emma asks quietly, when Redhead starts jabbering at Natural Auburn.

It’s exactly how she likes it, is how it is, and she looks at Emma with something like restraint tugging at every sentence that comes to mind.  “It’s perfect,” she murmurs, puts her hand on Emma’s thigh, just above the knee, and squeezes lightly.  “Thank you.”

Emma is always quick to smile, but her eyes don’t always follow immediately.  Right now, they linger in surprise before finally brightening.  “Good.”  And then, softer, “Is this okay?”

In response, Regina leans back until she feels Emma’s biceps against her bare shoulder, keeps her left hand resting on Emma’s thigh but slightly higher than before—far closer to the edge of her shorts.  “Yes.  Is this?”

Emma winks at her, still smiling, and nods towards the pool.  “Kid’s having a blast.”

He is; he and Matthew have teamed up at the front of the net stretched across the middle of the pool and keep spiking the beach ball down onto the other side.  Henry’s laughing and his hair is a wreck—too long to be kept wet like this—and clearly making friends of the other kids on his team.  “He’s earned it, wouldn’t you say?”

“Been a trooper,” Emma agrees.  Her fingers curl around Regina’s shoulder while she takes a pull of her beer.  “Especially about painting.”

“He did the downstairs bathroom by himself yesterday.  Tape to primer to topcoat.”

“Ladies,” Liz chides, and she and Emma both start slightly.  “No retreating into your couple-y haze.”

“Split ‘em up,” Redhead urges.  “Can’t get dirt if they’re a united front.”

To Regina’s surprise, Emma tightens her grip, tugs her closer.  “Hey, hey, go easy on the newbies, yeah?” she protests.  “We’ll behave.  Promise.”

“We _were_ behaving,” Regina counters. 

Natural Auburn shakes her head.  “Yeah, like a couple of newlyweds,” she chides, and when Emma shrugs like she’s copping to it, Regina wants to close her eyes in dismay.  

“You _are_?” Redhead squeaks, and the high pitch pierces like a nail.

She manages to hide the wince—or transfer it to Emma with her nails digging into her skin for a quick moment.  “I suppose we are, technically,” Regina hedges.  But it’s too late; the rest of the women have drawn in closer.  Emma’s going rigid next to her, and her leg is tensed like she’s ready to bolt.  Carefully, carefully, Regina squeezes her thigh—not that there’s much give at all—then massages small circles into the muscle until Emma relaxes again.  “We got married at the beginning of August.”

“Right before you moved?” Liz clarifies, and Emma nods, exhales around the neck of her beer bottle.  “So how long were you together before then?”

_Shit_.  She turns her head to look at Emma, furrows her brow like she’s trying to calculate.  “Two—no, three—no two years, right?”

“Halfway to three,” Emma offers, and finally, finally, her body softens.

It’s Regina’s turn to stiffen when a blonde, directly across from Emma, asks, “So, Henry is from a previous relationship? Whose?”

Tact, clearly, not something acquired from the water.  “It’s complicated,” Emma tries to sidestep the attention, adds, “and really boring.”

Liz sits back, arches an eyebrow and calls over her shoulder.  “Donna!  Get back here, it’s story time.”  Busty Brunette stands up from where she’s attending to two smaller kids near the shallow end of the pool and books it back to the deck.  Liz settles her shoulders and beams at the two of them.  “Go on.”

“It’s really not worth the telling,” Emma starts, but Regina knows that the more they protest, the worse it will be, so she _hmms_ a disagreement, waits until Emma turns her face towards her.

“If they want to know,” she says quietly, “we should tell them.  Just keep it simple and true, right?”  Emma’s pleading out with her eyes, wide and soft and just slightly scared, so Regina keeps her own gaze steady and reassuring, even smiles for her.  “You have nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to hide,” she adds, voice barely audible.  “Okay?”

Three long beats where they just look at each other, and Emma nods.  “Okay.”

Regina keeps her gaze for a moment longer, then turns to face the other women, takes a deep breath and puts on a smile.  “Well, I adopted Henry, solo, when I was twenty two,” she begins, and is immediately interrupted.

“Twenty two and you took on a kid voluntarily?” Tactless Blonde sounds aghast.

Liz’s eyes are on her, she can feel it, and so she doesn’t let her smile falter for a moment.  “I was an unusual twenty two year old.  My mother and father were prominent in local politics in my hometown, I was well provided for and expected to follow in their footsteps, so I was actually quite stable and secure.  I also knew that I had… no interest in a long-term partner.  So, yes, I was twenty two and voluntarily adopted Henry by myself.”

Tactless Blonde sits back, and across the circle, Liz beams at her.

“Telling him about his adoption did not go well, to say the least.  He found out on his own when he was ten and we went through a really rough patch, during which he ran away to Boston one day and came back that night dragging this absolute heathen of a blonde with a hideous yellow car, declaring that he’d found his real mom.”

“My car,” Emma interrupts, and actually sounds irritated, “was _beautiful_.”

“So you don’t argue the heathen part?”

“Considering everything else you called me in that first year, no, I’m gonna take that one as an upgrade.”

“Wait,” Busty Brunette cuts in, “so, you’re his birth mom? And you two hated each other?”

“Yes,” they say together, and watch a ripple go around the circle.

“It’d been a closed adoption,” Emma explains, “so basically, I was the last person she ever expected to be bringing the kid back home—“

“At _midnight_ , mind you, without even calling ahead.”

“Like you would’ve been asleep.”

“Of course not, because you kept me worried for four hours longer than I had to be.”

“ _Anyway_ ,” Emma says loudly, “so I get there, and she plays nice, all polite, but—I mean, I never thought I’d see him again, and it—I had family in the area, so I stuck around a few days.  She sees me the next day, flips her lid, vows to—what was it?” And Emma leans a bit closer, brings her mouth close to her ear.  “Destroy me if it was the last thing you did?”

Regina rolls her eyes, looks away.  “No need for the dramatics, dear,” she says dryly, and feels Emma chuckle.  “You have to understand, with how rocky things were—I didn’t react _well_ , but I think it’s perfectly understandable.”

“So you stuck around for a few days and what, won her over?” Redhead asks.

Emma snorts.  “Yeah, right.  No, I stuck around kinda permanently.  The sheriff offered me a job as a deputy so I relocated.”

At the mention of Graham, Regina’s jaw tightens and damn it, Liz catches it.  “What’s the deal with the sheriff?”

Emma freezes, looks to Regina with a clear _Oh, shit_ in her eyes.  Regina sighs, grits her teeth.  “I was dating him when he offered her the job,” she explains, and there’s a collective gasp of horror and delight.  “Not long after that, he broke up with me to pursue Emma.”

“And you said it was _boring_ ,” Natural Auburn mutters.

“So then what happened?” Tactless Blonde prompts, and Regina looks to Emma, unsure of how to twist this truth.

“He had a heart defect,” Emma says without hesitation, and rubs circles with her thumb over the point of Regina’s shoulder.  “Died suddenly a few days after that break-up.”

Another gasp of horror, and shock.  “It’s like they put _Days_ back on, just for a day,” murmurs a bottle blonde, two seats over from Liz.

“So _then_ you got together?”

Emma scoffs again.  “No, then she tried to take my job away from me, and followed that up with a bunch of other schemes that all pretty much failed.”

It’s a generous brush-over that also makes Regina look completely incompetent.  “I notice you’ve left out the part where you took a chainsaw to my tree,” she retorts, only to get a proud smile from Emma.

“Yeah,” she says wistfully.  “That was a good one.”

“I _loved_ that tree.”

Emma shrugs.  “You had me arrested on false charges.  Retribution was necessary.”

“Holy shit, this is awesome,” Busty Brunette whispers.

Regina bites her tongue and takes two deep breaths, consciously lets it go.  “ _Anyway_.  So I kept trying to convince her to leave, and she wouldn’t, and eventually I just gave up and figured she would mess up all on her own—“

“Hey!”

“—and then Henry came down with a really bad case of food poisoning.  He was in the hospital for—days, actually, and Emma was just… there for us,” she says, feels Emma’s thumb freeze on her shoulder.  “She stayed until he got better.  And kept… kept looking out for me.  Making sure I was okay.”

“Ohhh, okay, so, you fell first,” Natural Auburn says, pointing to Emma.

Regina hesitates, is blindsided when Emma shrugs again.  “I mean, I may or may not have looked at her that first night and prayed ‘please don’t be straight’,” and the entire circle laughs, “but in terms of ‘falling’—I dunno.  I guess it just kind of… I mean, I ended up having to leave town for almost a month to deal with some old business, and when I came back things were just… different.  With us, and with us and Henry, and it… grew from there, I guess?”

“Who made the first move after all of that?”

“She did,” they say together, and glare at each other through the laughter.


	7. Chapter 7

Henry comes up with a burger and a hot dog, hands Regina the burger plate and grins at her.  “So, storytime, huh?” he asks, and takes a bite of the hot dog.

She gives him a silencing look, not that it matters; half the circle’s dispersed to get food off the grill.  “Sweetheart, your hair is a disaster.”  She sets the plate aside on the empty chair next to her, reaches up to comb her fingers through it and attempt to get it out of his eyes.  “Will you _please_ go get it cut?”

“Depends.”  His grin gets wider.  “Can I get a mohawk?”

She gives her best long-suffering sigh.  “Must you?”

“I need a signature feature.”

“Your existence isn’t enough?”

“For _you_ , Mom, but there’s the whole rest of the world.”  But he’s smiling gently.  “Fine.  No mohawk… for now.”

“Thank you.”

“Where’s Ma?”

Regina gestures over towards the cooler, where Emma’s dispensing beers with all the ease of a seasoned hostess.  Or a bartender.  “Buying friends,” she quips, and Henry chuckles.

“Like you guys didn’t do that already with the non-dramatic retelling of your epic love story.”

“Henry,” she warns, picking up her plate again.

“My favorite part is when Ma said that your first kiss is a secret.”

“ _Henry_.”

“You know, _I_ don’t even know that story—“

“Do you want to ever leave the house again?”

Smirking, he takes the now-empty chair, stretches his legs out.  “Think Grams would love hearing about today?”

“Counter-blackmail only works if you lose nothing in the reveal.”

Henry chuckles around a mouthful of food.  “One mother teaches me how to pick locks, the other how to manipulate people.”

“She taught you _what_?”

* * *

Emma always gets a glass of water to take up to bed with her so Regina waits at the kitchen table, stomach in knots, throat burning slightly from the shot of whiskey she just knocked back.  She should probably just go to bed, let this whole insane day join the ranks of the other insane days that make up their lives together; tomorrow is Henry’s first day of school and Emma’s first day split between classes at the Academy and actually on the job, and she has at least four prospective clients to try to book this week and it’s a short week anyway.  So really, _really_ , she should just go to bed.

She keeps waiting, fingers winding together and around each other, until finally Emma shuffles in, basketball shorts swishing as she walks.

It’s her chance and she freezes.

Emma drains one glass of water by chugging it, refills and turns to go when she sees Regina, pauses and then takes two steps towards her.  “Hey.  Big day tomorrow for the kid, you should probably get some sleep.”

If she speaks, she could ruin everything.  _Everything_.  All the work they did today, everything they’ve done in the last three months, having the courage to actually leave everything behind to start with—Henry.  If she speaks, she could ruin everything that’s been good for Henry.

Emma takes two more steps forward, wraps her fingers around the top rail of the empty chair catty-cornered to Regina’s.  “Do you—do you need to talk?”

Slowly, slowly, she wets her lips, opens her mouth.  “I’m scared to,” she gets out, and watches Emma sit down.

“Why?”

“I tend to ruin things.”

Emma’s tank top is thin—thin material, thin-strapped, all of it.  The AC is strongest in the kitchen—five vents, evenly spaced and radiant, not directional—and Regina has to look away.  “Are you scared of ruining this?”

_This_.  Vague enough to be non-threatening.  Vague enough to terrify her.  “This.  Anything.  Everything.”

Emma takes a deep breath, and Regina watches her chest rise and fall.  “Is this about Graham?”

Her gaze snaps up to Emma’s eyes, Emma’s eyes which are bright, and hard, and mournful.  “Yes,” she rasps, and braces herself.

Emma nods slowly, looks away and takes a sip of water, seems to be gathering words.  “After… after these last two years, Regina, I don’t think I’m in any position to judge you for how you handled a threat to your world.”

“Emma,” she whispers, because she—this isn’t deserved.  “The threat—“

“He was remembering,” Emma says, clipped and hard.  “If he remembered, Henry would have had an ally.  I might have believed sooner, but with fewer allies.  Magic would have come earlier and I would have been less prepared.  I certainly wouldn’t have been willing to protect you from it.  Spencer and French and all those idiots would have gone after you, and me.  I would have let them take you, or Gold deal with you.  There would be a dragon loose in Storybrooke.  Your mother would have found a way through sooner and you wouldn’t have had any reason to even try to stay away from her, if you’d even been alive.  No allies, at all.  Sydney would’ve tried to turn on you sooner.  Who knows what Greg Mendel would have arrived to see?  Who knows when or where Tamara would’ve taken Henry?  Who knows if we would’ve been able to get him back—if you had gone alone, if I had gone alone, because God knows we wouldn’t have gone together.  If you’d even been alive.”

She wants Emma to stop talking now.

“So maybe you didn’t know that any of those things would happen.  But you knew that things would _suck_.  So you made a move to protect what was yours.”  Emma’s eyes are still mournful, still hard, but darkening with such—such understanding.  “I grew up in this world, Regina.  I understand more than a little about a pre-emptive strike.”

“But you wouldn’t—“

“Wouldn’t I?” Emma asks, and her voice is just as edged and dangerous as on the shores of the Mermaid Lagoon.  “You think if I’d suspected Tamara wanted to kidnap Henry _,_ I wouldn’t have shot her on sight?  Or Greg?”

“You wouldn’t.”

Emma hums, a small concession.  “Maybe I wouldn’t kill the body,” she says, and there.  There’s that darkness.  There’s what Regina’s been afraid of.  “But the mind?  If it was as easy as just reaching out and squeezing?”  Emma stands up, looks down at Regina.  “We finally know what we’re each capable of.  I’ve never done you the disservice of forgetting.  Don’t do it to me.”

And then, feather light, Emma puts her hand to the back of Regina’s head, presses dry lips to her forehead briefly.  “Get some sleep,” she whispers, picks up her water glass, and heads for the stairs without looking back.


	8. Chapter 8

Staff meetings are usually more productive than this.

It’s six of them in the conference room, spread out with binders and flip charts and calculators and two whiteboards, trying to arrange layout for upcoming X-Factor tryouts.  Or that’s what they were doing before all of them—in tandem, and Regina’s starting to understand how group work lays the foundation for a hive mind—hit a wall and just _lost_ it.  Lena has started sketching some sort of cartoon character on an empty flip chart page instead of blocking out shifts and personnel.  Mark challenged Shantel to a game of trashketball using the extra copies of the RFP.  Michael and Daquan are tossing a Nerf football—where it came from, she’s got no clue—back and forth and saying things about some girl named Demi that she’d rather not hear ever again in her lifetime instead of figuring out how many stanchions and belts they’ll need to queue up an estimated _eighteen thousand_ people.

Sometimes she thinks about how New York is something like eleven million people and how there are days when she controls the movements of _eighteen thousand people_ and the idea of a little tiny curse affecting maybe a thousand people seems… absurd.  Pathetic.  Scrabbling for crumbs of power.

Her version of zoning out has always been morose introspection.

There’s a knock on the frosted glass door and it swings open to show Rita in yet another leopard print skirt.  Her nails are orange today, with a spray of white flowers on both ring fingers.  “Mills,” she says, and crooks her index finger.  “You’ve been summoned.”

Predictably, Michael’s the first one to start up the _oooooh you’re in trouble_ chant.  Rita flips him the bird while Regina gathers up her papers and glances at her phone.  Three emails, two texts and it’s nearly two; they’ve gotten nowhere.  “Take lunch while I’m gone,” she sighs, and taps her pen on the end of the table to make sure Mark and Shantel are paying attention.  “Be back in here by three.  I want floor plans, I want personnel lists, I want the different security company bids in price order and I also want a macchiato, not Starbucks.”

Daquan snorts and Shantel laughs a little but Mark just smirks at her, then winks, and maybe she should feel some type of way about absolutely knowing that there will be a macchiato from Buongiorno waiting for her at three but mostly she wants to know why Moneybags wants to see her and whether either of those two texts is Henry’s school supply list.

Out in the hallway, Rita makes her pause in front of the water cooler, drink half a cup.  “It’s about your paperwork.  He asked for a final list of employees opting out of insurance an hour ago and then for your personnel file.  So I’m pretty sure it’s just dotting _i_ s and crossing _t_ s and dumb things.”

She’s not fine, because she knows, knows, knows what this will lead to, and chugs the rest of the water.  “Did the list include reasons?”

“Yes.”

_Fuck_.

Rita takes the plastic cup from her, looks her square in the eye.  “Regina.  It’s fine.  Okay?  All it said was prior coverage.”

“And then he asked for all my other paperwork.”

“Yeah.”

“All the other paperwork that had to be adjusted three weeks ago.”

Rita catches on and then on again, and crosses her arms.  “Regina.  _It’s fine_.”

“And if it’s not?”

“Then you shouldn’t want to be here, anyway.”

She exhales heavily, shakes her head.  “It’s not that simple, Rita.”

“It never is,” Rita commiserates, and puts a hand on her shoulder.  “Just… do you. And don’t say anything you’re not comfortable saying.  Do you.”

Regina tries to smile as they start walking past cubicles towards the main offices—she really does—but all she manages to do is grimace and hand over her binder and notepad.  A quick swipe at her lock screen shows that one text is from Henry—and the first few words are “Mom, I know we said,” and she skips down to the next message, because Henry wheedling is not something she can handle right now.  The other message is from Emma, straight to the point: _Chance at OT tmrw nite, take?_

She sends back a quick _Y_ and hands the phone to Rita, too.  “If either of them call, pick up for me?  And if it’s an emergency—“

“Interrupt you, I know.”  Rita pauses outside of Moneybags’s office, gives her an encouraging smile.  “You’re fine.”

She takes two deep breaths and then knocks on the door, waits until a nasal “Yeah?” comes back and then opens the door.  “You wanted to see me?”

Sam Grogan’s corner office is, as usual, a disaster zone, and when he waves her in, she picks her way around open file boxes carefully until she gets to the two chairs in front of his desk, one of which has a massive brown bag of takeout and the other of which has a pile of file folders.  “Clear off a chair, have a seat,” he grunts, continues taking longhand notes on a document.

She looks between the two chairs and tries to keep her upper lip from curling in distaste.  Eventually she settles on clearing off the files, because any type of oil from the takeout will ruin her silk dress.  Moneybags glances up at her twice before finally setting down his pen, removing his glasses and raking both hands through his intimidatingly springy white hair.  “You’re not taking company insurance because of prior coverage.”

“Yes.”

“Prior coverage which I’m assuming comes through your recent marriage.”

Her mouth goes dry, and she has to force her hands to stay on the armrests of the chair.  “Yes.”

“You were not married when we hired you.”

“No.”

Moneybags nods, leans back in his chair and brings his pen cap to his mouth, chews on it absently.  “So, you’ve been working here for almost two months, got married three weeks ago and didn’t invite any of us?”

It takes her a whole thirty seconds to understand that he’s teasing her, and all of the steel leaves her spine in a rush.  “I—it was a small—“

Moneybags snorts, shakes his head.  “A joke, Mills.  Don’t ever invite me to personal shit.  Makes me uncomfortable to think of my employees as people.”

She stares at him.

“ _Jokes,_ Mills.  Jesus.  Anyway.  Congratulations.”

There’s no way he called her in here just to say _congratulations on getting hitched_.  No possible way.  “Thank you?”

“I’m gonna put you on the Ministry convention account.”

Normally, she can follow his astronomical leaps in sequential thought, but she’s got nothing.  “If you’re sure?”

He stares at her, narrowing his eyes slightly, and she holds his gaze and waits with her face neutral and her shoulders straight.  “Their planners are a group of ministers’ wives.  Normally they give us fucking ulcers.  Maybe if they’re dealing with someone more textbook traditional, they’ll ease up.”

She isn’t sure whether she should laugh hysterically or just politely correct him.  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

Moneybags has just uncapped his pen again to go back to his document and so just looks at her from underneath his flat brows.  “Oh?”

The words that come out aren’t the ones that she knows _should_ , but she just—she _can’t_.  “My son,” she starts, and Moneybags raises his head entirely, mouth opening in surprise.  “He’s fourteen now.  Born out of wedlock.  I can’t imagine that would go over well.”

“You have a _son_?”  And then he’s giving her the down-up-down and she has to suppress the shudder of distaste.  “You have a _teenage_ son?”

“Yes,” she says, and feels her disgust amplify as it turns in on herself.  “So probably not as textbook traditional as you’d like.”

Moneybags sits back, keeps staring at her.  “Huh.”  And then, “Well, maybe keep details out of it.  I still think you’d be an asset to the account.”

His eyes are still raking over her body and she just—granted, this outcome is better than what she feared but being assessed like this, weighed and measured like a commodity—

“If that’s all?” she asks, and stands abruptly, brushes off her skirt to keep her hands interrupting his field of vision.

“Yeah, that’s all,” Moneybags says.  “How’s X-Factor coming?”

“Getting there,” is all she says, and manages a wan smile before darting out of the office.

* * *

At home, she curls up with Henry on the couch and makes him write out a list of school supplies while combing her fingers through his hair and telling him, over and over, how much of a gift he is.

Emma heats up leftovers in the oven and watches Regina over the dinner table, eyes dark and focused, and when Henry’s in the kitchen loading up the dishwasher, she comes around the table and touches her elbow, waits until their eyes meet.  “You okay?”

There are a million ways for Regina to say “Yes, dear,” and she wants to, so much, but what comes out is, “My previous marriage.”

Emma blanches.

She takes a deep breath and continues, looks away.  “Sometimes I’m reminded.”

Very, very quietly, Emma crouches next to her chair, hand fluttering in the air next to Regina’s thigh before retreating.  “Did I—“

“No,” she interrupts quickly.  “No.  It wasn’t you.”  The way Emma’s whole face eases up with relief, and then darkens with guilt—Regina watches her own hand reach out and wind a lock of soft if disorganized blonde hair around her finger.  “We’re okay.”

Emma allows the touch and Regina doesn’t want to think about it.  “Something at work?”

“I thought I was going to have to come out to Grogan.”  She says it quietly, and knows that Emma gets it when that frowning mouth flattens into a line.

“What do you need?”

“Our son,” she whispers, and Emma gives her a small, sweet smile, understanding shining out of her eyes.


	9. Chapter 9

There’s a knock on the metal frame of her cubicle and Regina looks up from trying to get her latest binder of contracts into her bag to see Mark loosening his lilac tie and grinning at her.  “Are you actually taking work home, or is this some type of chick thing to justify buying more purses?”

Rolling her eyes, she finally manages to get the solid spine under the zipper tab.  “Some of us are actually productive employees, Garriga.”

 “Or gigantic nerds.”

She glares and he just keeps grinning.  “Is there a point to today’s harassment?”

“Whoa, whoa, let’s _not_ pair the word harassment with the highest ranking black man in the office, yeah?”  His smile is just slightly less bright, and she looks back down at her bag, rearranges her sunglasses and her wallet to give her hands something to do.  “Anyway, nerd, since we’re all such horrible slackers in comparison to yourself, a few of us are gonna grab drinks up at Colmado.  Possibly talk shop, _probably_ just do shots.  Come with?”

It’s a good thing she’s got her purse to fiddle with, because there’s a whole two seconds where she’s frozen and a whole three seconds where she thinks about saying yes.  “Sounds like fun, but I have to get home,” she says, as breezily as she can.

Mark just crosses his arms, shakes his head.  “Bullshit, Mills.  You’re here until six almost every night.”

The clock widget on her computer monitor reads 4:53.  There’s a 5:05 train that’ll get her home in thirty minutes and Mark is now wasting her time.  “I have to take my son school shopping tonight—“

“Your son?”

She sighs, closes her eyes.  She’d liked Mark and his constant, biting humor.  But now he’d be—

But Mark is just smiling at her.  “You’ve never mentioned him before.”

“Never needed to,” she says slowly, and stares at him.

He grins at her, wider than ever, and rolls his shoulder off the cubicle frame.  “Well, I won’t ask you to break your date with him.  Have fun, Mills.  And, uh, raincheck on shots, yeah?”

Mark’s face is open, and kind, and—and _respectful_.  “Sure,” she agrees.  “And you guys have fun, too.”

The clock reads 4:55 before she’s able to get moving again.

* * *

Matthew and Henry collectively negotiate for soft pretzels in exchange for complete cooperation in clothing stores and Regina can’t hide her proud smirk.  “I take back calling Henry a good influence,” Liz says as they walk past the fake palm trees in front of Hollister, and wipes mustard from her lip with a napkin.  “He’s ruining me.”

Laughing, Regina tears off another piece of her own pretzel and watches the two boys as they pretend to not race each other down the wing of the mall.  “I like to think of it less as _ruining_ , more as… encouraging you to loosen up.”

“Don’t try that motherly justification crap on me, Regina, I’ve got three of them, I know all the bullshit.”  But Liz is smiling, and this—this thing that might be friendship, maybe, if she just gives it time and space and room to grow—this is nice.  “‘Oh, the kids encourage us to take better care of our health.  Oh, the kids encourage us to try new things, experience life.  Oh, the kids encourage us to stay close to family.’  Please.”  Liz’s voice drops from the falsetto back to her regular register.  “Lies, bull, and delusions.  If it can’t keep in the fridge for a week, it’s not dinner, we haven’t left the Tri-State in three years and don’t _get_ me started on my father-in-law.”

Regina coughs on a piece of pretzel.  “The father-in-law coming to stay with you in two weeks?”

“One and the same,” Liz sighs, and narrows her eyes.  “Matty!”  The boys are stopped at one of the pop-up stalls, examining a remote control helicopter, and Matthew merely glances back and shakes his head before returning his attention to the helicopter.  “I swear, he thinks that if he stares at it longingly enough, he’ll get it.”

Henry hesitates before looking back at Matthew, touching his elbow and tilting his head back towards the two of them.  It feels exactly like winning.  “So what are you going to do about your father-in-law?” she asks, to distract Liz from Matthew’s resistance.

“Same thing I’ve done since I got married.  Shut up and deal with it and take it out in trade.”

She starts to ask, “Trade?” and then realizes, swallows the end of the word and tries her best not to blush.

Failure; Liz looks at her and starts laughing.  “What, make-up sex not a thing in your little fairytale?”

_Don’t blush.  Don’t blush_.  _Don’t—oh, fuck, say something about your fictional sex life._   “I—um—it’s—“

Liz stops walking, stares openly at her.  “Wait, _seriously_?”

She needs words, she needs words _right now_ , and she has nothing, absolutely nothing.  “I mean—it’s—we’re—“  God, what can she say, how does she make this lie up, what— “No, of course it is, I just—it’s—I don’t—please stop staring at me like that.”

But Liz just crosses her arms and cocks her head and slowly, slowly frowns.  The boys are strolling back towards them and of all the conversations she’s never wanted Henry to hear, fake gossip about his mothers’ fake angry sex is top of the list.  “Regina,” Liz says, still slowly, “when was the last time you talked about your sex life?”

“A very long time ago, Liz, so can we drop this, the boys—“

“Regina,” Liz continues, and Regina pinches her eyes shut because she can see this one coming like the clouds of a dark curse.  “When was the last time you and Emma _had_ sex?”

“Mom!” Henry calls, and then he is right beside her and it’s all she can do to shoot Liz a _please_ look.  “There’s a GameStop next to the Gap, can we stop in?”

“Sure, sweetheart,” she says quickly.  “Let’s go.”

* * *

Next to the Gap is a Victoria’s Secret.

Liz makes the executive decision to leave the boys in the GameStop and leads the way into a sea of black plastic and pink neon, pawing through drawers of obscenely-patterned panties that are all, Regina is sure, polyester blends.  “Look, Regina.  Same bird, same stone.”

“That’s definitely not the phrase.”

Waving her off, Liz moves on to a rack of hangers with more flimsy polyester blends in hypothetically seductive designs and neon colors.  “I need something to remind Rich that his father being in our house ruins his life.  You need something to remind your woman that being tired is not an excuse.”

“I never said—“

“Regina,” Liz says seriously, holding out an electric blue corset-type… _thing_.  “Henry is with me until seven or eight most days and I know you both come straight from work when you pick him up.  So unless you’re giving Britney competition for world’s shortest marriage, cut the crap.”

She thinks about it, and thinks about it, and thinks.  New jobs, new home, new town.  Teenage son.  Of course they’re tired.  Of course that takes a toll.  It’s all right there; Liz has handed it to her.  And all she has to do is just nod along.

It’s not a lie, at all.

“Why are you holding that out to me,” she finally asks, and pokes at the corset-thing gingerly, with just her pinky.

“Try it on,” Liz says.

“It’s _repugnant_.”

“Fine.  Then you have to try this one,” Liz retorts, and thrusts a second hanger into Regina’s hands.

* * *

It’s almost ten when they get home, and Emma’s eating cereal over a half-completed crossword wedged into her criminal law workbook.  “What’d you do, buy the whole mall?” she teases, and puts down the cereal to return Henry’s hug.

“Leave you alone for half a night—Emma, there’s leftovers _right there_ ,” Regina gripes, and points at one shelf in the refrigerator before getting an orange from the drawer.

“Not the whole mall,” Henry replies, and steals Emma’s bowl, manages to get a bite of Cookie Crisp before she can snatch it back.  “Maybe half of Target, though.”

“Target, huh?”  That stupid, cocky grin is on Emma’s face, and Regina tries to sneer in response, but she’s pretty sure that struggling with orange peel defeats the disdain of a sneer.  “I thought Target was for peasants.”

“When in Rome,” is all she manages to reply, finally getting a decent grip on the peel, but apparently it’s good enough; Emma’s grin turns dopey, amused.  “Henry, up to bed.  We’ll sort this stuff out in the morning.”

He obediently deposits the shopping bags on one of the empty kitchen chairs, kisses Emma’s forehead and then her own cheek.  “Night, moms,” he says, and past his ear she can see Emma looking at them with that look, that look of _Where you go, we go_.

“G’nite, baby,” she murmurs, and hugs him close for a moment.

When he’s up the stairs and she can hear his footsteps in the hall overhead, she turns back to see Emma poking through the shopping bags—carefully, so as not to mess up any of the folded clothes or the stacks of pens and notebooks.  “Everything he needed?” she asks quietly.

“Everything on his list.  We’ll see if that was really everything.”

Some noncommittal sound comes from Emma’s mouth, then a laugh.  “GameStop, huh?  What’d he swindle out of—“

Far too late, Regina remembers putting the Victoria’s Secret bag inside an emptied GameStop bag.

“Um,” Emma says, and the slow dawning on her face is in almost comic opposition to how quickly she drops the ice blue lace back into the bag.  “I.  Um.  Sorry.  I didn’t—Shit.  Um.”

“It’s—it’s fine,” she gets out, and tries to focus on the orange, focuses too hard and crushes the ends of two slices between her fingers.  And then there is heavy and awkward silence, because—because—

“She tried to talk to me about our sex life,” Regina finally bursts out.  “And I—I didn’t know what to say, at all, so—so that—she was—it made—that _happened_.”

Emma can’t quite look at her, can only manage to get her eyes up to shoulder level and even then it feels like she’s looking at the fridge.  “Our sex life?” she repeats, and something in her voice is—

Regina doesn’t know what happens to her own voice when she says “Yes,” but it’s something bad, something terrible, something that makes lies sound like truths.

* * *

At three, she jerks awake, some noise dying in her throat and clawing as it goes.

No, not some noise.  She knows this feeling in her vocal cords.  Knows it by its absence and its presence.

Her dream is hazy and fragmented but flitting though her mind on a loop.  Ice blue lace and strong hands tugging at it, dragging it from her skin, off her shoulders and over her body and down her legs and she _knows_ those hands, if only they would stay still long enough—

Her palm is already pressing between her thighs; she gives up on identifying the hands and gives in to the image alone.

* * *

Halfway through another conference call from Moneybags’ office, Regina’s phone buzzes in two short bursts, so she knows it’s Emma before she even turns the phone face up.

_i can’t_ **_believe_ ** _u gave us a boring sex life_

Before she can put the phone down and try to get control of her face again—because she doesn’t know what her mouth is doing but it is certainly _not_ smiling—a second message comes through.

_u had_ **_1_ ** _job, Mills!  1!_

She is _not_ smiling.


	10. Chapter 10

X-Factor tryouts are the first week of October, so the Center pulls 16 hour days again. Now that she’s actual staff, she’s scheduled for eight hour shifts and pulls the later shift for four days, the early shift for three.  The early shift isn’t terrible—everyone’s pretty sedated, even if the place is crowded—but it’s the first day of the late shift that really screws her.  She’s used to getting up early, so she still wakes up in time to put together breakfast for Henry before his eight o’clock report time.

Normally, she’s gone before eight, as well, so she misses Emma leaving in the morning, but that first day of the late shift she’s up and lounging in the living room when Emma thunders down the stairs in her full uniform, hat tucked under her arm and fiddling with the buckle of her belt.

It’s not like Regina’s never seen the all-black day uniform before.  She’s taken it to the cleaner’s at least twice already.  It shouldn’t be a big deal.  It’s a boxy black oxford and shapeless black pants and it shouldn’t be a big deal.  Except—except it is.  The way the shirt fits to Emma’s shoulders and around her arms, the way the weight of the belt hangs on her hips, even the fit at the seat of the pants—

It’s a big deal.

Emma’s still in her socks and sliding all over the living room floor, tossing things around randomly as if she’s looking for something.  “You go to class in uniform?” Regina manages to get out, and tries to look away when Emma drops to her hands and knees to check under the couch.

“Nah, it’s day five, no class all courthouse today,” Emma says, voice slightly muffled.  “You seen the car keys?”

“They’re not on the hook?”

“No—think Henry used the boxcutter last night to cut out those damn paper models—got ‘em!”  She straightens up, wields the keys triumphantly, and then realizes that the neat bun her hair was in when she came down the stairs is completely askew.  “Shit.  I’m so gonna be late.”

Regina rolls her eyes, sets aside the paper and beckons Emma towards her.  “Get your boots, I’ll redo your hair while you lace up.”

Without a word, Emma scrambles towards the front door, picks up her regulation boots and comes back, sits on the floor in front of Regina and pulls at one pin, lets her hair fall out of the bun completely.  All the other pins come tumbling out into Regina’s lap; at least three hit the floor.  “Wonderful, really,” Regina snips, and quickly gathers the loose tresses into a tight ponytail at the very base of Emma’s skull.

“Ow!”

“Quiet.”  It’s strange to handle someone else’s hair—it’s been years and years, and she won’t think about the last female she did this for, she won’t—but it comes back to her quickly, and she twists and spirals and pins rapidly, ignores Emma’s repeated yelps.  “It will stay, should you do more needless acrobatics later today.”

“I wish.  I’ll probably play another round of ‘How many times can I spin in this chair before I puke?’”

Regina can’t help but laugh, because apparently location makes no difference to who Emma Swan is.  “Good to know some things don’t change.”

Emma stands up, shakes out her shoulders, and turns with a grin.  “Original recipe, no additives,” she quips.  “Text me when you get on the train, I’ll come pick you up.”

“It’s a block.”

“It’ll be midnight.”

“It’s a _block_.”

“Regina.”

She sighs, waves Emma away.  “Fine.  Now get out of my house, I have lounging to do.”

Emma smirks, shakes her head, and scoops her hat up off the couch before heading out the door.

* * *

The next morning, Regina stays in bed and listens to Henry’s thirty-second whine about cold cereal for breakfast instead of eggs, listens to Emma try to get ready far more quietly than any previous day.  She does not think about how Emma came to get her in yet another paper-thin tank and workout shorts, with an oversized zip-up hoodie hanging off her body and doing nothing in terms of covering her up, and she doesn’t think about the day uniform, and she doesn’t open her eyes when Emma knocks on her bedroom door and creeps in quietly, sits on the edge of the bed and brushes hair from her face.

“Regina,” she says softly, and Regina pinches her eyes shut defiantly.  Emma only laughs, quietly.  “Not trying to wake you, I promise.  But—I’m heading out, just wanted to remind you to let me know when to come pick you up, okay?”

Regina mumbles an “Okay” and huffs when Emma stands up again, can’t resist cracking one eye open to check if Emma’s still in the room and only catches her back, in casual clothes.  In jeans.

She doesn’t think about it.  She doesn’t.  She’s not thinking about any of that when she ignores the finally found box under her bed, pushes her hand (her left, her left, she hates it but her left) between her legs and gets to work.

* * *

In the third week of October, when Regina is between clients, Emma calls her around three, voice too cheerful.  “Hey, wife,” she hears through the phone, and rolls her eyes.

“Yes, dear?”

“You know, I’m actually okay with you calling me _honey_.  _Dear_ is what you use when you’re plotting ways to kill someone.”

“Is that so, dear?”

“Haven’t we moved past the part where you plot ways to kill me?”

Regina waits silently, checks another list of electrical requests.

“Okay, what if I offer to pick you up from your office?”

That gets her attention.  “You’re going to cut out of work to give me a ride home?”

“No,” and Emma drags out the vowel.  Something’s up; she’s working too hard to ingratiate herself.  “I _have_ off this afternoon and thought I’d come save you from mingling with the peasants at the train station.”

Regina can’t help but smirk, shaking her head.  “Ever the savior, hmm?” she teases, looks up at tapping on the glass of her cubicle.  Mark waves, holds up a binder labeled “EMF” and waits.  She moves to take it from him, then hesitates, points to the top of the filing cabinet behind her.  “I wouldn’t be opposed,” she finally says, just as Mark taps on the glass again and winks before walking away.  “You won’t be in uniform, will you?”

There’s an awkward silence.  “Embarrassed?” Emma asks quietly.

Regina scoffs.  “To have people think I’m getting arrested by a Jersey cop?  Absolutely.”

She can hear Emma stifle a laugh.  “I’d be in the Benz, Regina, no one would think you’re getting arrested.”

“Answer the question, dear.”

“Jesus, if it’s a big deal I’ll go home and change first—“

“Emma,” she cuts in, gently chiding.  “I would very much appreciate you coming to get me.”

Rita, paused at the copier, turns around quickly, eyes glinting.

“Okay,” Emma says, slightly sullen.  “I’ll head out now, then.”

“Now?”

“You know how the tunnel gets.  Just text me when you’re coming down.”

“Okay.  Did you call Liz already, ask her to keep Henry?”

“Nah, I figured I should ask you first.  I’ll call her on the way.”

“Don’t, I’ll call,” Regina says.  “You… keep both hands on the wheel.  We don’t want another sign incident.”

“There was a fucking wolf in the road.”

“Mmmhmm.”

“You _know_ there was a wolf.”

“Good _bye_ , dear.”

As soon as she hangs up, Rita’s perched on the edge of her desk, grinning broadly.  “So,” she begins, twisting a lock of dark hair around her finger.  “We get to meet the wife, huh?”

Regina gives her a flat glare, sniffs with disdain.  “She’s not coming up.”

“We’ll come down.”

“You’ll do no such thing.”

“Then you’d better bring her up.”

“Then she’ll have to park.”

“I’ll give her validation.”

“There’s not enough time to put her on the visitor’s list.”

“They only need an hour’s notice.”

Regina sighs.  “Would you really come down if I don’t bring her up?”

“Me, the temps, all the managers, bet Moneybags would come down, too.”  Rita juts her chin towards the largest office, then smirks.  “And you know Marky Mark is dying to meet her.”

“Marky Mark,” Regina repeats flatly, and rolls her eyes.

“Have you _seen_ him?  Mm.  He could model Calvin Klein underwear for me _any_ day.”

“Rita,” Regina hisses, and looks around.  “That’s unprofessional.”

“I know, but he’s got the body to do it professionally if he—“

“ _Rita_.”  When she looks up, the girl’s practically beaming at her.  “Why do you all care about meeting Emma so much?”

“To quote Daquan at his most eloquent, ‘We gotta know what kinda girl can bag a honey like Ms. Mills.’”

Regina pinches the bridge of her nose, closes her eyes.  “So it’s because I’m married to a woman.”

“No.”  Rita examines her nails carefully, then fixes Regina with a particularly intense dark gaze.  “It’s because you’re _fine_ , and we want to know how fine the spouse is to match.”

“And you’d do the same if Emma were a man?”

“Hell yes.  I’d also probably plot to steal him away.  Here, you don’t run that risk.”  Regina can’t help but chuckle, and Rita smiles kindly for the first time in the entire conversation.  “I promise you, it’s not about you being a big giant lezzie.  You’ve been here four months and none of us knows anything about you, besides the fact that you’re married and have a kid.  People want to know you, Regina, they’re curious.  And they’ll probably respond better to you going all alpha bitch in planning meetings if they see your human side, too.”

There’s a point to everything Rita’s said, and they both know it.  So Regina sighs, chews on her lower lip.  “You promise she won’t be ambushed?”  Rita’s expression shifts to confusion, and Regina clarifies.  “We’re _both_ private people, Rita.  I don’t want to bring her up here and have her bombarded with questions.  She doesn’t react well—it won’t be good, okay?”

Suddenly, Rita’s eyes soften, and she looks almost… dreamy?  “God, that’s sweet,” she murmurs, and nods.  “I will tell everyone to be on their best behavior.  Promise.”  Rita holds out her pinky, and Regina remembers how that goes, remembers Henry gleefully hooking his pinky around hers multiple times.

She takes Rita’s pinky, pulls at her hand to bring them slightly closer together.  “Anything goes badly and I will _destroy_ you,” she hisses.

Rita just grins, ear to ear.  “Oh, my God, I’m _so excited_ ,” she squeals, and darts off, calling “We get to meet the wife!” down the corridor.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh, quality control?


	11. Chapter 11

_hey. downstairs. lemme know when ur ready._

Regina stares at her phone, steels herself, and presses send. _Would you be willing to come up and meet everyone?_

It’s less than ten seconds before her phone buzzes again. _u want me 2 meet everyone u work w?_

_Yes_

_in uniform?_

_Yes_

_r u high?_

She snorts, texts back _Yes & I’m coming down to get you_ and tucks her phone into her pants pocket, strides towards the elevator and tries not to roll her eyes when she sees Rita perk up at the front desk.

It’s brisk outside, enough to make her wish she’d thought to put her blazer on before coming down.Emma, at least, was smart and is wearing the uniform bomber jacket, leaning against the car like she’s still a nomad in motorcycle boots.“No, seriously, are you on narcotics right now?” she calls out, and Regina throws her hands up in exasperation.

“Yes, let _that_ be the first thing you say to me while in uniform.”But Emma just grins at her, shrugs one shoulder like she knows damn well what impression she’s just given anyone paying attention.The gold star shield in the windshield glints twice as Regina walks forward.“Go park in that garage,” and she points up to the visible garage on 35th.“Rita will validate for you.”

Emma looks over at the garage, then back at Regina and shucks the jacket without hesitation, steps up onto the pavement to place it around her shoulders.“Go wait inside,” she says softly.

“I’m fine.”But she burrows into the shearling lining, relishes the way it’s still warm from Emma’s body.Emma rolls her eyes, turns away and gets back in the car without another word, pulling into traffic smoothly.  

(Begrudgingly, Regina allows that servicing the car perhaps _did_ improve the steering.)

It takes more than ten minutes for Emma to reappear, walking at that particular city pace that Regina has yet to master, and she’s grateful for the jacket loan by the second minute.The collar smells faintly of cigarette smoke—or maybe it’s the scent drifting over from the south face of the building, a blend of sour and spicy tobacco that gets to her every time she comes downstairs during the day—and, strangely, of cider, the sharp tang of fresh-cut apples layered over cloves and nutmeg.But then Emma’s in eyesight, and there’s no way in hell she’ll let her see this… appreciation.

She doesn’t wait for Emma to reach her before turning to head back into the building, knows that Emma follows by the dull click of her boots on the lobby tile.Security has a badge ready and waves her through, and then they’re waiting for the elevator and Emma’s giving her the _my coffee’s just right thank you_ smile.“Are you really about to parade me around to everyone you work with?”

Regina glares at her, tugs the jacket tighter around her shoulders.“Apparently it will improve all my interoffice relationships if I can prove that there is a living person in this world who likes me enough to marry me,” she says stiffly, and Emma bursts out laughing.

She didn’t think it’d be _that_ funny.

“Mayor Mills not popular in New York either, then?” Emma teases, still laughing.

Regina narrows her eyes.“I was an _excellent_ mayor.”

“Mmm, I won’t disagree with that, babe, but you still would’ve lost the popular vote.”

She stiffens just as the elevator dings, and Emma notices, reaches for her and tugs her hand until Regina turns to face her, irritation clear on her face.“What?The doors are going to close.”

“I’m sorry,” Emma says, clearly.“I didn’t think that you cared about… being liked.Because they’re peasants.”

“I don’t.They are.”

That smile comes back, and Emma squeezes her hand twice.“You’re likable.”

“Irrelevant.”With a huff, she jerks her hand away, hits the button for the elevator again and doesn’t wait for Emma before stepping in.“Take your hair down,” she says, pressing _4_ and then stepping into the corner.“You look like a cop when it’s in a bun.”Emma blinks at her, then looks down at her uniform, then back up.“Like an on-duty cop.”

Sighing, Emma pulls at a pin, which loosens the bun, and then another, but it doesn’t fall as quickly as the other day and, exasperated, Regina steps over to her and tugs hard on the outer twist, watches the ponytail unwind and rakes her fingers through to collect the pins that stay tucked into the curls.Emma hisses when her fingers hit snags, but by the time the elevator doors open, her hair is down and out and she looks—

Like herself.That’s all.Emma looks like herself.

The pins go into the pocket of Emma’s jacket—which Regina is not really debating as much as planning to remove the patches from and claim as her own—and they step out onto the fourth floor, Regina first with Emma close behind her.She goes to unlock the frosted glass front door and stops with her fingers curled on the edge of the handle, wants to kick herself.

Her keys are definitely sitting on her desk.

“Hey—you okay?” Emma murmurs, and her warm breath over the collar of the jacket makes Regina shiver enough to finally notice the pressure of Emma’s hand at the small of her back.“You’ve got this look…”

“I left my keys,” she admits slowly, and when Emma’s frown doesn’t really change, adds, “which means I have to _ask_ for us to be let in.”

Slow dawning in Emma’s eyes, and Regina turns to the buzzer with a heavy sigh.“Rita.”

She just _knows_ , can _see_ the exact smirk that’s probably on Rita’s face.“Regina, honey.I didn’t know you’d stepped out.”

_God_.This is going to be agonizing.“I left my keys on my desk.Could you let me in, please?”

“Left your keys?That’s not like you at all.”

There’s a snort from her right, and she barely focuses the glare tossed at Emma before returning to glare at the buzzer and the still-locked door.“Rita.The door, please.”

“Sure thing,” Rita practically coos, and just as the dull _zzzz_ signals the door unlocking, Emma reaches out a hand, laces their fingers together.

Disaster.This whole thing is going to be a disaster.

* * *

Disaster the first: apparently, Emma’s paid attention whenever Regina’s vented about work.

Rita tries to play coyly surprised when the two of them step into reception, but then—and it’s visible, so clearly visible, the girl has no subtlety whatsoever—processes Emma’s uniform and plainly gapes.“You’re a _cop_ ,” she stammers.

Regina can feel the way the space between Emma’s shoulder blades pinches with tension all the way in their linked hands, and she doesn’t know why Emma’s smile is so weak and why that makes something feel milky-sick in the very center of her stomach.“Hi,” Emma says, fake-cheerful like on every Wednesday night phone call with Mary Margaret.“Emma Swan.And you’re… Rita, right?”

Both Rita and Regina stare at her, astonished.

“Regina says this place can’t run without you,” Emma continues, and holds out a hand.“Great to finally meet you.”

Rita, still slack-jawed, shakes her hand.“It’s—great to finally meet you, too,” she manages.“I was beginning to think she made you up.”

Emma’s smile is exactly like Wednesday nights, exactly like that moment precisely six minutes before she begs off the call when the inevitable question of _When are you coming home_ crops up.“Just because I don’t tell you what I had for lunch on the weekends doesn’t mean I didn’t eat, Rita,” Regina snaps, and immediately wants to take it back for the look on Rita’s face.

But Emma’s smile is changing, just slightly, just enough, and there’s warmth and pressure in their joined hands again.“Was that… babe, was that a sex joke?” Emma murmurs, and her grin is crooked with smugness.

And it’s exactly what’s needed, because Regina feels a blush high and hot in her cheeks and Rita bursts out laughing, loudly and freely.“Oh, my god, it _so_ was.”

“It was _not_ ,” she insists, but it’s too late; Rita’s snickering and Emma’s grinning with her eyes bright and mischievous, tugging gently on her hand to bring their bodies a little closer, presses her lips to Regina’s temple for a millisecond.“This is why I never bring you anywhere.”

“Uh-huh,” Emma says indulgently, and that milky-sick feeling fades into another type of distaste, like she’s caught a whiff of menthols on the street, like she isn’t ready for the sharpness and the craving that inevitably follows.

And then, right then, disaster the second strikes in the form of Moneybags and Mark walking out of the conference room together, both of them looking over something on the iPad Mark’s holding.

Sometimes, it’s hard _not_ to believe that there’s magic in this world, because time definitely slows down while Moneybags looks at Regina, then at Emma, then at Emma’s yellow-stitched name and the five-pointed golden star.There is an agonizingly slow moment when he starts to open his mouth, and then his gaze falls to the heavy belt, and his mouth snaps shut again.

The reception area is awkwardly silent while Moneybags looks between Emma’s belt and the jacket Regina still has on and Mark just blatantly stares at Emma.But then Rita clears her throat—gently, and if Regina’s ever before found her indispensable, it’s nothing compared to this moment.“Sam,” Regina begins, and sends Rita a grateful look.“Good, we caught you between meetings.”She pauses, has to, just to take a breath.“This is Emma.My wife.”

Moneybags blinks.

“Emma, this is Sam Grogan, my boss,” she continues, and when she meets Emma’s gaze, there’s not a trace of the mess of emotions from a minute ago.All she gets is calmness, and a small quirk to Emma’s mouth just for her.

Then Emma looks at Moneybags with a frigidly polite smile, sticks out her hand stiffly.“Very nice to meet you, sir,” she says, and sets her jaw, and Regina feels—

But then Grogan actually _chuckles_ , and takes Emma’s hand, shakes it warmly.“Very nice to meet you, too, Officer Mills.”

Regina corrects him before Emma even opens her mouth.“Deputy Swan, actually,” she says, and ignores the way Emma’s smile shifts.

“My apologies, then.Deputy Swan.”And then Moneybags chuckles again, looks at Regina with a strange type of respect in his eyes.“You’ve been sitting on this Ministry account laughing your ass off at me this whole time, haven’t you?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she deadpans, and out of the corner of her eye sees Emma’s mouth twitch, sees her press her lips together to stifle the smile.

Grogan snorts, shakes his head.“Well-played, Mills.Well-played.”Still shaking his head, he takes a step towards his office door.“Well, go on, show her off.Check in with me before you leave, though, we’ll give Morrow that call he wanted.”

“Sure,” she agrees, and feels Emma’s thumb stroke over hers reassuringly.

Grogan’s almost in his office before he turns around, gestures to Emma.“Right.Deputy.Nice to meet you.Again.Come by any time.”Then he’s through his door, kicking aside a file box and bellowing “Garriga!Let’s go!”

Mark has finally stopped staring solely at Emma and is now looking between the two of them, frowning faintly.“I—have to go?” he says, uncertainly, and takes a step forward, starts tucking the iPad under one arm to try and shake Emma’s hand.

“Mark,” Regina interrupts, and tilts her head towards Moneybags’ office.“Later.”

“Right,” he says, and grins weakly.“I will meet you later.”

And then it’s just Rita and Emma and her, and she wants to sleep for about a week, and maybe Emma picks up on that, because there’s a double squeeze to her hand and a soft, bright smile.“So… his hair… it’s really…”

“Yep,” Rita agrees.

“Eyebrows too.”

“Yep.”

“Mustache might be overkill, really.”

“Definitely.”

Emma laughs, softly but deeply, and when Regina finally looks back at Rita, she has to force a scowl.

* * *

“So, when you asked if I was gonna be in uniform,” Emma starts as they round the corner to Regina’s cubicle, “it wasn’t just about how it would look for you.”

She wishes she could say that yes, she’d thought ahead to how people would react to that gleaming star suddenly appearing in the office, how they’d react to the heavy belt, even without Emma’s service weapon present.But the truth is she hadn’t, and that oversight seems asinine, now. _How_ could she not think about it?  

“I actually… didn’t know.”No, that’s not right; she’d known.She just… “Or didn’t think about knowing.”

Emma is quiet, and looking down at the thin industrial carpet.“I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” she says just as quietly, and meets Emma’s gaze for a moment before sighing, dropping into her chair.“Give me a few minutes to finish up some emails?”

“Sure,” Emma acquiesces, and turns to look at the bulletin wall, studies the tabloid sheets papering it: booth floor plans, scheduling print outs, checklists, contact lists.“This is… intense,” she adds, after a few minutes of silence.Regina only _hmms_ in response, focusing instead on explaining to the Connecticut Dentist’s Association that no, they’re really not the appropriate venue for a small awards dinner.“You manage all of this?”

“That’s just for this quarter,” she says distractedly, and taps the overhead cabinet.“All the things for the first half of next year are in the binders here.”

Emma lifts it open and whistles softly.“Jesus, Regina. I mean, I knew you were doing a lot, but… this is _intense_.”

At Emma’s tone—strangely wondrous, reverent—she stops typing, looks up.“It’s not so bad, if you manage it right,” she deflects.

The slightest touch to the back of her neck sends a shiver down her spine again.“It’s impressive even if you manage it right,” Emma says quietly, strokes her thumb down the midline of Regina’s neck twice.“You should bring Henry by, let him see what a badass you are.”

Her smile _hurts_ , it’s so wide and quick and fierce.“You think he’d—yeah?”

“Yeah,” Emma affirms, and her eyes shine with that same strange wondrousness until Regina can’t hold her gaze, has to look away.“Hey, you gonna finish that coffee?”

Said coffee is in a _#1 Mom_ mug painted in red and silver by a seven-year-old Henry and has been sitting on her desk since at least eleven that morning.“Oh, no, please don’t,” she starts, but it’s too late; Emma’s already taken a sip and her lip is curling with disgust.

“Is that—is that fucking _Starbucks_ ,” Emma hisses, and sticks her tongue out, fakes gagging.“Jesus, Regina, _Starbucks_?”

Rolling her eyes, she shoves at Emma’s hip, points in the direction of the break room.“Shut up, Swan,” she grumbles.“I said _don’t_ , didn’t I?Go dump it out in the sink.And if you want a fresh cup, there’s a Keurig in the break room.Creamer and sugar on the table.”

“I’m not drinking fucking _Starbucks_ ,” Emma mutters, but obediently goes in the direction indicated.  

It takes a good fifteen minutes for Regina to realize that she’s gotten through at least four emails without interruption, meaning Emma’s absolutely getting into trouble somewhere.Or possibly destroying the Keurig, and Regina will _not_ have that on her head.But when she walks into the break room, Emma’s standing there with Mark, wiping the inside of the mug with a paper towel and smiling at something he’s saying.

She doesn’t know why the sight of it makes her uncomfortable, unsettled, unbalanced, but Emma, chatting casually with Mark, Emma in her uniform and Mark in his suit and it just—it’s two worlds that can’t mix.Mustn’t mix, not if she’s going to keep the lies and the truths neat in her head.

Except then Emma sees her hovering in the doorway, and that smile—that smile _blinds_ her.“You came to see if I broke the Keurig, didn’t you?” Emma teases, and fakes a pout.“Don’t even trust me with a one-touch?”

She lifts an eyebrow, waits.

“That’s _not_ a sex joke,” Emma adds, directly to Mark, and Regina pinches the bridge of her nose while he coughs on his coffee.

“Come along, dear,” she sighs, and holds her hand out for the mug.

Emma thwarts her again, taking her hand in her own.“How many different ways are you plotting to kill me right now?”

“At least twelve,” Regina says flatly, and shoots Mark a goodbye smile.

“Is that a record?”

“Not even close.”

* * *

In the car, Emma clears her throat and drums her fingers on the steering wheel, and she loosens her already unbuttoned collar at least twice before finally starting to speak.  “So… it’s my birthday next week.”

Regina already knows.Henry reminded her last month.She still hasn’t figured out a gift; does she keep it true and simply friendly, or does she play the part of the loving wife and ham it up?“Is it?” she finally replies, sending another email from her phone.

“Yeah.On, uh, Friday, actually.”Emma clears her throat again.“And, uh, I was wondering.See, now that I have an assigned partner—we’re supposed to, like, bond, or something.Apparently.”

Regina doesn’t look up from her phone, but all of her attention is on Emma’s words.“Bond how?”

“Like, hang out, get to know each other.”

“That sounds… reasonable.”

“Yeah,” Emma agrees, and with her weight on the brake, shifts in her seat.Traffic for the outbound Lincoln Tunnel is just as bad as Emma predicted.“So, uh, Rubio—he suggested, uh, going out for drinks, on Friday.”

Ah.“Emma, if you want to go drink with the other deputies on your birthday—“

“No,” Emma cuts in quickly, “that’s not—he wants you to come, too.We.We want you to come.”

Oh.“Oh,” she says faintly.“Why?”

“Kind of like a meet-the-fam thing?But, uh, just the spouses, I guess.And it’s drinks and dancing.His brother owns a place in Bayonne, by the water, and he says it’d be a good time, just… getting to know each other.”

Emma’s behavior all day suddenly makes so much more sense, because there’s a dead weight in Regina’s stomach at what is clearly a double date.“Do you… want us to do that?” Regina asks carefully.

“Are you willing to do that?” Emma counters.

“Do you dance?” she asks, genuinely curious.

“Do you?”

They’re both silent, stealing glances at each other in the dim light of the right bore.Her phone dings softly with a text from Rita, just two sentences: _She’s wonderful.Stop hiding her._

“We’ll have to get a sitter for Henry.”

“He’ll just ask to go to Matt’s.”

“Well, we can talk to Liz about it when we get there, right?”

Finally, Emma realizes what she’s saying, and there’s such relief on her face, such easy gratitude, that Regina almost believes it won’t be so bad.

 


	12. Chapter 12

According to Henry, she has to get Emma a card.

She’s seen the sign for a card store at the strip mall along Route 3 every day on her way to work, so on a day when Emma carpools with her partner, she cuts out of work a little earlier than usual and manages to get home by six, get Henry into the car by 6:30 and over to the strip mall by seven.  “We close at eight,” one of the salespeople says when they walk in, and she’s too tired to glare properly but Henry is most certainly not.

Her son.  Her son, her son, her son.

Henry leads her over to an aisle that is abominably pink and purple, down a few feet to the “Mother” section.  Of course, he picks through all the supposedly funny cards, laughing at some, scorning others.  After five minutes, he realizes she’s not looking through cards on her own.  “Mom?”

This _isn’t_ a dilemma and she _isn’t_ internally freaking out.  That’s not what’s happening, at all.

“Friend” is all the way down the aisle, but “Wife” is right in front of her and she has no idea what she’s supposed to think of Emma.  What Emma thinks of her.  Whether birthdays should be honest or if there are expectations or—

Gently, gently, Henry takes her left hand and waits for her to look at him.  “Wanna look together?” he asks, and reaches over to grab a “Wife” card with Snoopy on the front.

She exhales, smiles at him, shakes her head.  “There is _glitter_ on that card.”

“So, my gay moms are not _that_ gay?” he asks with a completely straight face.

Yes.  Definitely, definitely her son.

They browse together for a few minutes, Henry pulling out increasingly ridiculous cards while she opts for more… _demure_ cards, before he switches back to the “Mother” cards.  He’s browsing leisurely, but out of the corner of her eye she can see that salesperson intermittently strolling past the aisle and frowning at them.

She’s too tired for this.

“Did you get her a gift?” Henry asks suddenly, grimacing at a pop-up card.

“Am I supposed to?” she asks, and tries to hide her smirk at his aghast expression.  “ _Yes_ , Henry, I got her a gift.”

“What’dya get her?”

“None of your business.”

Scowling, he plucks the card she was reaching for right out of her grasp, then sticks his tongue out at her.  “No fair.”

“Ex _cuse_ you, young man, I know for a fact you were raised better.”  She holds out her hand expectantly, doesn’t smile when Henry shamefacedly puts the card in her hand.  “Now.  What point were you trying to make?”

“That I want to know what you got her.  So I can help you pick a card that matches.”

_Matching_.  Because cards and gifts have to match.  And a funny gift would mean a funny card but a serious gift—

“A nice card, sweetheart,” she says softly.  “We need to pick a nice card.”

Henry watches her for a moment, sharp-eyed and frowning slightly, before nodding.  “Okay.”

A few more minutes of silent browsing, before Henry starts to giggle—honestly giggle, like he did when he was a tiny little boy—and hands her a card with the most devilish grin she’s ever seen.  “It’s a _nice_ card,” he gets out, before he dissolves into giggles again.

She reads the first two lines and actually _snorts_ , claps a hand over her mouth by line five and feels tears in her eyes by the time she opens to the inside of the card.  When she can finally stop laughing, she just looks at Henry and his devilish, devilish grin.  “It’s _perfect_ ,” she says, and he beams.

* * *

She can’t give that card _with_ the gift.  She can’t.

Besides, Henry has this plan for a birthday morning, and when he gets plans and operations and logistics in his head, Regina just has to let him run with it.  So he sets up a family breakfast—carefully recruiting Regina for pancakes—and makes a little stand for the two cards, and sits impatiently bouncing at the table until he decides he needs Emma to wake up before seven so he can still be on time for school.

She tries to stop him—really, she does—but he’s up the stairs and bursting into Emma’s room before she can even put down her coffee; she winces at the volume of his bellowed “Happy Birthday, Ma!”  There’s a groan that sounds something like a dying ox, and then Henry’s laugh, and thumping and cursing and more laughing and then, slowly and low, Emma’s chuckle, followed by a yelp from Henry and his lingering little-boy giggle.

When they both come trotting down the stairs two minutes later, Emma attempting to redo her ponytail, Regina hasn’t quite wrangled her smile down—thinks maybe she doesn’t have to.  “Morning,” she says gently, and lets that smile reach her eyes.  “Happy birthday.”

Emma grins back, and she’s tired and uncaffeinated and yet.  And yet.  Emma grins back and says “Thank you,” softly and earnestly, and then grunts when Henry pulls her to the table.  “All right, all right, I’m here, I’m here,” she grumbles, but it’s good-natured and full of fondness, built on casual and rough hugs between the two of them.  “Pancakes!”

“Wait!” Henry says, and shakes his head, taking the fork out of Emma’s hand as she slides into her chair.  “Cards first!”

“ _Henry_ ,” Regina reprimands, and he looks up at her, wide-eyed and completely unaware.  “If Emma wants to eat first—“

“No, no, no,” Emma interrupts, hands up in surrender.  “I mean—I don’t know how this works, so, if there’s an order to things, we’ll do it in order.  Right?”

That she can so casually, gently, admit _I don’t know how this works_ , and that Henry can catch it, freeze for just a second before pinning his smile back into place—Regina feels something pinching between her lungs, beneath her ribs.  “Any order is the right order,” she says, gently, and the way Emma smiles at her makes that thing pinch harder.

“Cards first, then.  Because, listen, once I get syrup in the mix, there’s no going back.”

Henry’s smile is back to genuine and he hands Emma his card while she sets her plate to the side. “Coffee?” Regina calls, doesn’t really listen for an answer because, to be honest, she’s bracing herself against the card.

When _Everything Is Awesome_ explodes in the kitchen, Emma’s cheer of delight is _real_ , and that’s enough to make Regina cover her eyes with a hand for a minute while her son and his equally juvenile mother sing along and laugh and laugh and laugh.  She waits until the damn song is over, and after they’ve played it a second time, before coming to the table with two mugs of coffee and an eyeroll that isn’t nearly as disdainful as it should be.  “Honestly.”

“ _Honestly_ ,” Henry confirms, and his whole face scrunches up with the force of his smile.  “Best. Movie. Ever.”

“ _Ever_ ,” Emma echoes.

“Whatever,” Regina sighs, and tips her head to the plate of pancakes, away from the other card.  “Can we eat now?”

Sticking her tongue out, Emma shakes her head and picks up the unopened card with a flourish.  “Nice try,” she teases, “but nope, your super square card with flowers and doilies is gonna get opened.”

Flowers and _doilies_.  She thinks, longingly, of the exact size fireball she’d need to properly impress upon Emma her opinion of _doilies_.

It’s all Henry can do to keep his grin in check when Emma opens the envelope and scoffs as she pulls the card out.  “For God’s sake, it’s got flowers right on the cover!” she says, and then she starts reading.

For a long, long moment that intensifies just before Emma opens to the inside, Regina is certain she’s made a huge error in judgment, because Emma’s not smiling, or chuckling.  Her eyes are wide and almost _frightened_ , and there’s a hitch in her breathing before she opens the card.

And then there’s a huge gasp, and suddenly Emma’s _cackling_ , falling out of her chair on the floor _cackling_ , holding her stomach with her eyes pinched shut and tiny dots of moisture at the crinkled corners.  “Oh, my God,” she gasps, and tries to wipe at her eyes, but another wave of laughter hits her, and she just sprawls back on her elbows.  “Oh, my God.”

Henry’s laughing with her, loud and happy, and Regina looks between the two of them, faces shining and mouths wide and open, and can’t help but feel _pleased_ , satisfied.  “What was that about square and doilies?” she asks, but her voice is too bright, too amused.

“I take it back,” Emma gasps out, and snorts again.  “I’ve never been trolled so hard in my life.  Oh, my God, this is genius.”

“Mmm,” is all she says in return, but can’t quite sip her coffee around her smile.

* * *

The three of them go out to dinner beforehand, a tiny Thai restaurant that Henry’s been dying to go back to, and give Emma her gifts in the pause before dessert.  Henry gives her a carefully wrapped CD set, _Led Zeppelin Remastered_ , with a sheepish and hopeful smile.  Emma laughs, and opens her arms for a hug, ruffles Henry’s hair like she always does.  “Lose one, get them all?  Best trade ever,” she tells him.  “Thank you.  I love it.”

When Henry returns to his chair, she looks over at Regina and the apprehension in her eyes stings slightly.  Regina ignores the feeling and sets a flat, square white box on the table, gently tugs at the purple ribbon to even the bow out.  “Happy birthday,” she says quietly, and slides it towards Emma.

Those gray-green eyes—greener, now, in the warm incandescent lighting—flick between the gift and Regina herself, but Emma gradually fixes her attention on undoing the bow carefully.  She lifts the lid of the box to reveal a thin silver bracelet, with a square hunk of amber set diagonally and framed in thin strips of silver.  One of the vendors from Monday’s show was a jeweler, had cases upon cases of metalwork and semi-precious stones, but Regina had seen the amber from across the aisle and it just felt… 

Emma isn’t moving, isn’t touching the bracelet, and Henry glances nervously at Regina, then back at Emma.  “Ma?” he prompts.  “Are you okay?”

His voice seems to jolt Emma out of a trance, and she raises her hands out of her lap to lift the bracelet from the cotton cushioning.  Her hands tremble as she undoes the catch and slips it onto her left wrist, and she can’t quite get the catch to take again.

Slowly, Regina reaches across her body to settle her fingers on Emma’s wrist, and the shaking stops.  She redoes the clasp quickly, releases Emma’s wrist and watches silently as Emma rotates her hand slowly, letting the amber catch the light at different angles.  

“It’s beautiful,” Emma finally chokes out, and looks up at Regina with a soft smile.  “Thank you.”

There are a million things Regina wants to say— _Are you okay?_ first among them—but she just smiles back.  “You’re welcome.”

* * *

She knocks on Emma’s door loudly, shifts one of the hangers back to her right hand and scrutinizes both dresses for the millionth time.  “Emma—I _really_ don’t know what’s appropriate for this place, can you—“

The door swings open and Emma’s standing there in just her jeans and bra, and it’s clear that she’s been crying, and Regina has no idea what to do.  “Hold ‘em up,” Emma says gruffly, and glances between the two before pointing to the dark teal dress.  “You wear that and I’ll end up getting in a fight.”

What does that even _mean_?  “So, no on the teal?”

“The purple’s too business-y,” Emma says, and walks away from the door, over to her nightstand where a box of tissues and several used ones are already sitting.  

Regina hesitates, because this is foreign territory in so many different ways, but then steps into the room, lays both dresses down on the bed.  “What’s wrong?” she asks softly, takes one step closer.

“Nothing.”

“Emma.”  Another step, and she reaches out to place three fingers just to the side of Emma’s spine, right in one of those dimples of her lower back.  “Please tell me what’s wrong?”  More silence, and Emma shaking her head.  “Is it—is it the bracelet?  If you don’t like it, that’s okay—“

“I love it.”  Emma’s tone is defensive and aggressive and mournful and Regina is so very, very confused.

“So it’s not the bracelet, so—“

“It’s the nicest thing I’ve ever gotten for my birthday.”

_Oh_.

“I kind of don’t know how to handle that.  Any of this.  My parents called me at six in the morning to sing me happy birthday.  I got to go to dinner with my _son_ and have him give me my favorite rock albums—albums, plural—because he lost my original ‘III’ _six months ago_.  And you, you’re so goddamn _nice_ to me all the time.  This bracelet, which is beautiful and perfect and I _love_ it, okay, it’s the kind of thing I would’ve stared at in a shop window for hours, plotting ways to get in there and steal it, Regina, I don’t— _no,”_ she huffs out when Regina reaches out to take her hand, “no, don’t you _get it_?  I can’t deal with you being this nice to me, okay?”

Regina is so very, very confused, but when Emma just kind of crumples in front of her, she moves forward again, pulls Emma into a hug and rubs small circles on her back, just above the clasp of her bra.  “I promise I will be extra mean from tomorrow on,” she murmurs softly, and is pleased to get a messy snort from Emma.  “But today is your birthday, so I’m going to keep being nice to you, because you deserve kindness on your birthday.  Okay?”

Slowly, Emma nods and pulls back from the hug.  “Okay.”

“Are you sure?”  Regina can’t help but cup Emma’s face in her hands, brush the tear tracks away with her fingertips.  “Because you’re still crying.”

Emma nods, sniffles.  “I really love the bracelet,” she whispers.  “I really do.”

Something about that—the willingness to be grateful—she’s going to blame that for making her lose her mind.  “I’m glad you like it.”  She smiles for Emma, gentle and sweet, and reaches behind her and grabs a clean tissue, holds it to her nose.  “Blow.”  Emma blushes but does as she’s told, and Regina balls up the used tissue and puts it on the nightstand and this feeling, this—this _kindness_ —she just goes with the feeling, _goes_ with it, shifts her weight to her toes and leans up to gently kiss the very tip of Emma’s nose, comes back down like it’s normal and nothing.  “Okay?” she asks again, and watches Emma slowly open her eyes.

“Okay.”

“Good.”  Regina takes a full step back, feels a shiver coiling at the base of her spine.  “Now, we’re both going to get dressed, and then we’re going to go out and get very drunk, and then it won’t be your birthday anymore, and everything will be fine.”

Finally, finally, Emma smiles.  “Okay,” she says again.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The card--which is a real card, I have photographic proof:
> 
> FRONT:  
> I Love The Story of Us
> 
> Once upon a time,  
> you reached out your hand to me  
>  and we began this journey...  
> Along the way, I've discovered  
>  that being with you  
> grows sweeter and sweeter every day.  
> Wherever life takes us,  
>  the shelter of your embrace  
>  will always be my home--  
>  the light of your loving smile  
>  my warmth and comfort.
> 
> INSIDE:  
> You are my storybook love,  
>  the woman of my dreams.  
> And our life together  
>  is my happily ever after.
> 
> Happy Birthday


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for use of homophobic slur. Also, white guys.

Emma gets in a fight.  It’s possibly an indirect result of Regina’s teal dress.

Rubio’s brother’s place isn’t some hole-in-the-wall-bar in Bayonne.  It’s a massive former-warehouse-turned-club called Azucar in Jersey City proper, right on the Hudson.  Rubio—whose first name is Javier, although it’s unclear if Emma even knows he has a first name—drives them out there in a beat up Navigator.  Javi’s wife is named Monica and is sweet, cute, short and plump with a wicked sense of humor and a pleasant laugh.  For a moment, Regina thinks this won’t work, because Monica speaks rapid-fire Spanish to her and while she sort of understands, she can’t for the life of her construct a reply.  But Monica—Monica’s something special, because she looks at Regina’s face and apologizes.  _Apologizes_.  She says, quick and easy, “Sorry, I should’ve asked if you speak Spanish.  No worries,” and repeats the beginning of her story in English, and it’s fine.  It’s fine, and when Emma catches her eye to gauge her impression, she just nods, slightly, and smiles.

The club is huge, a mass of steel and glass and _people_ , and the music is loud and Hector, Javi’s brother, has a VIP table ready for them and his best waitress on hand, and Regina’s starting to get that this is _special treatment_ from the way Emma looks at Javi with gratitude and a little irritation.  

They start with a round of Brugal and then another, and a third, and then Javi pulls Monica out to dance and two guys who aren’t completely unfortunate come up to Emma and her and ask, and Emma shrugs like she’s saying _why not_ so Regina goes with it.  She’d forgotten how much she loved dancing: how, before she’d made the fatal mistake of saving a little girl on a horse, she and Daniel would sneak down to the village on some Friday nights and join the other young lovers dancing and drinking outside the tavern; how when she was very, very small, her father taught her the steps to the dances of his homeland, letting her stand on his feet and getting his old valet to play the guitar for them.

Salsa and merengue aren’t quite like danzon or milonga, but they certainly aren’t harder, and she’s got a decent handle on both within two songs.  She thanks the guy—man-child, really—for the dances, goes to walk away when someone new grabs her hand, offers her a coy smile and beckons her back.  Emma’s still dancing with the first guy, so Regina accepts, and the next, and the next.  She breaks for drinks twice, and Javi cuts in once, and then Emma’s standing in front of her, a little flushed and a little sweaty and there’s a bead of sweat trailing down from her collarbones away from the neckline of her white dress and down the deep V between her breasts—

Regina looks up quickly, puts on a smile and steps in, whispers, “You lead,” before laying one hand on Emma’s bare shoulder and the other on her upturned palm.  Emma holds her just right, clasped hands steady but loose, with her other hand pressed just under the curve of Regina’s shoulder blade, but nothing about this is proper; their bodies are too close together, and their fingers are threaded together, and Regina’s skin is tingling where Emma’s hand rests.

They’re nervous through the first song—Emma keeps looking around and Regina’s ninety percent certain that she keeps checking in with Javi and she can’t figure out why, because it’s all she can do to keep her feet under her when really, really, what she wants to do is—

But then there’s a second song, and a third, and the warm tingling hand on her back gets lower with every four-count until finally Emma’s pressing her middle finger along the very last exposed ridge of Regina’s spine, ring and pinky fingers splaying out over the satin-covered rise of her ass.  And then the song turns to bachata, and two tap-steps and the hitch of Emma’s hips with hers on each four count and Regina has to close her eyes, tightens her grip on Emma’s shoulder.  Somehow it translates into a _hold me closer_ , and Emma guides their clasped hands to her own shoulder, leaves Regina’s hand there and traces the length of her arm with just one finger before settling her hand alongside her other one, just a millimeter lower than before.  

Regina keeps her eyes closed and curls the fingers of her right hand around the back of Emma’s neck, thick blonde ponytail brushing against her hand, and she breathes in and _God_ , even Emma’s sweat smells sexy, she’s too buzzed for any of this to be a good idea, but the music keeps going and Emma’s laughing softly into her hair, murmuring something about _first dance as a married couple_ and Regina’s just _ruined_ , fucking _ruined_ , because just Emma’s soft sweet voice and breath against her ear is enough to get her wet.

“I need a break,” she says abruptly, and steps away from Emma, has to bite her lip to not make a sound when Emma’s fingers rake from her ass to her hips.  “I’m gonna get some water, or some air.”  Emma starts to say something, but Regina just turns away and heads straight for the bathroom, away from Emma and her hands and her mouth and—

God.  She’s so fucked.

The bathroom for the VIP area is mostly empty—some woman fixing her lipstick in the mirror gives Regina a spiteful glance and leaves quickly—and she leans over the sink exhaustedly, slowly dabs cold water at her neck and the hollows of her eyes.  

This was a mistake.  This whole stupid plan, this whole _marriage_ , living together, everything—it was a mistake.  Forget having to be a couple in public.  Forget drinking and dancing and touching and how much she wants to taste.

“Regina?”

_Fuck_.

Emma steps further into the bathroom and the door thumps softly behind her.  “You okay?” she asks, takes another step forward, steadier than when she first put her heels on back home.  Home, in the house they share with their shared son.

Regina closes her eyes, lets her head hang.

“Regina?”  There’s a feather-light touch to her bare back, and Emma’s so warm, so soft.  “Hey, talk to me.  Tell me what’s wrong.  Do we need to go?  We can go, if you’re not feeling too hot.”

Emma needs to not talk and not touch her and _God_ , why, why why why.

That warm soft hand on her back is rubbing gentle circles and then there’s another hand on hers, their fingers intertwining, and Regina looks at Emma’s slim strong fingers from beneath a curtain of her hair.

And then she decides _fuck everything_ and straightens up, Emma’s hand tight in hers, and maybe she does hesitate for a second because she will always hesitate when she’s about to destroy a good thing, and then she can’t not.  She can’t not.

The first touch of their mouths is a crash, awkward and miscalculated and overdetermined.  Emma doesn’t gasp as much as she grunts in surprise and probably pain, but she doesn’t back away.  She doesn’t back away and she doesn’t push.  She pulls, pulls in at Regina’s back, at her hands, and then their mouths _fit_ , then it’s— _oh_.

It’s so _good_.

Emma tastes like lime and sugar and lipgloss and rum and she kisses like she _wants_ this.  Heavy pressure and light flicks of her tongue and then easing up and just lips and Regina sinks, presses Emma back against the counter and fists one hand in that thick blonde hair, forcing the ponytail looser, tugging sharply for just a second.  The moan that catches and stutters out of Emma is—God, it’s delicious, and she wants to hear it again and again.  She wants it as much as she wants the scrape of Emma’s hand up her ribs and down her back, as much as she wants the heat against her thigh that gets hotter and moist when she presses forward even more, when she tenses her leg and shifts just enough.  

Just enough, and that moan again.  It’s beautiful.  Beautiful like Emma’s fingers digging into her back, into her ass, bringing their hips together harder and over and over again, and there’s definite wetness on her thigh now and God, she wants to _touch_ —

“Excuse me?”

She pulls away and Emma whines.  There are three girls—girls, young and sneering and fake-tanned—standing in the doorway, frowning.  “This is, like, a _public_ bathroom.  Can you take your, like, sideshow act elsewhere?”

She can feel Emma, hot and wet and suddenly so _angry_ , and—God, she’s fucked it all up.  Fucked it all up and had _children_ call her on it.

Stepping away from Emma—Emma, hot and wet, Emma, who’d kissed her back—feels like ripping off a bandaid.  She focuses on that feeling as she pushes past the girls in the doorway. She could go back to the table but—

_God_.  Emma kissed her back—Emma, hot and wet—God, she can’t be here, she can’t fuck things up further.  She can’t.

She blows past the table, pushes past the crush of people at the bars until she’s at the doors and flashing the stamp on her hand to the security guy, who guides her over to a second set of doors and lets her out away from where they’re checking IDs.  It’s freezing outside, icy air coming off the river, and there’s a few guys smoking near the velvet rope and the line of people—children, they’re all children—waiting to get in.  Mostly, the street is empty, feels desolate, and she doesn’t know what to do or where to go.

She does know she wants a cigarette.  She thinks that the tallest one, among the guys smoking, has a pack, and she’s pretty sure if she plays it just flirty enough he’ll let her bum more than one—

It takes almost no effort; slight tilt of the head, coy smile, twist of hair around her finger.  He offers her a cigarette and lights it for her, which is just a little too much, lets him get just a little too close.  She inhales lightly, forces a cough to give herself a reason to step away from him, relaxes a little when he snickers and returns his attention to the group of guys.  And then it’s just her and a shitty Marlboro, looking out towards the water and freezing her ass off. 

“Jesus _fuck_ , it’s fucking cold!”

Emma.  Sweet, stupid Emma, who kissed her back, and has followed her out, and didn’t think to get a coat either.  “Go inside, Emma,” she sighs, and keeps looking out at the water.

“Uh, no.  Not without you.”  She can feel how close Emma comes to her, can almost feel those warm strong fingers on her back again, but Emma doesn’t touch her.  “Can you—can you tell me what’s going on, please?  Because—look, I’m a little drunk, so maybe things aren’t adding up the way they’re supposed to, but that—in there—the kissing, that was—was that not good?  Because I—I thought it was good.  Until those tramps interrupted.  Unless that’s why you’re mad?  The tramps?”

Stupid, sweet Emma, who thought it was good and not a fuck up.

“Regina?  Can you just—can you tell me, please?  Can you look at me and tell me what to do to make this okay?”

She wants, so much, to turn around and press into Emma’s soft warm body, press in until she can feel that beautiful, beautiful moan in her own chest.  “Go back inside, Emma,” she whispers, and rubs her arms briskly to warm up, to not give in.

Emma circles around to look at her, look right into her eyes—and no, no, that’s dangerous, they can’t do that.  “But you’ll be alone.  That’s not okay.”

“Emma, _go_ ,” she whispers, and tried to keep her voice steady.

“No.”

“Hey, mami,” comes a voice from behind them, and she wishes, briefly, for the river to rise up and wash them all away.  “She bothering you?”

“Hey, jackass, _fuck off_ ,” Emma snaps, and her voice cracks in the cold.

When the man starts to laugh, Regina turns around, recognizes the tall guy with the cigarettes and feels a wave of dismay hit her like ice water.  “I’m fine, she’s not bothering me,” she says quickly, and tries to smile.

But he doesn’t back away, just scoffs and steps closer.  He’s tall, too tall, and Regina drops the cigarette instantly, takes a step back and another, feels her heel catch on the edge of the concrete walk before Emma’s there, catching her, supporting her.  “C’mon, mami—“

“She’s not your fucking mami,” Emma snarls, and her hands are hot on Regina’s hips for the half-second it takes for her to step forward, right into the tall guy’s range.  “So fuck off.”

And he starts to laugh.  “Okay, super dyke, why don’t you go find your own—“

Emma’s fist crunches his nose.


	14. Chapter 14

The bouncers break it up pretty quickly, helped by the fact that tall guy seemingly has actual compunctions about hitting back, and dropping the bummed cigarette freed up Regina’s hands to haul Emma away from him.They won’t let Emma back in, though, no matter how hard they both protest and complain.

One of the girls waiting on the line to get in offers Regina a small pack of wet wipes and points to Emma’s hands; her left knuckles are bloody from where she hit them with tall guy’s teeth, and the entire back of her right hand is scraped.

If she didn’t look so pathetic, Regina would have just thrown the wipes at her and gone back in alone.But she _does_ look pathetic: cold and angry and still just _looking_ at her like—like—

“Stop it,” she hisses, and swipes roughly at Emma’s knuckles again, tosses the used wipe onto the asphalt of the side-alley of the club and grabs another.

“Sorry?”

Idiot.“This is _your_ fault, so stop looking at me like—like whatever you’re doing.”

“How is this _my_ fault?”

_Idiot_.Regina roughly grabs her by the wrist, raises her hand to eye level between them.“Who punched him in the face, Emma?”

“He—he called me a dyke!”

“After you tried to out-macho him!”

“He called you mami!Twice!”

“Oh, my god, do you _honestly_ think this is the first time some idiot white guy has called me mami?” she hisses.“He called me mami, I got a cigarette out of it.A cigarette I didn’t even get to—“

Emma’s mouth interrupts her.Mouth and lips and teeth and tongue and _oh_.“Smoking is disgusting,” Emma mumbles, and wraps her right arm around Regina’s waist, draws her in and closer and higher, “but _fuck_ , you’re fuckin’ hot.”

She shouldn’t let this resume.She should stop this, now, while she can.But all she can focus on is how _warm_ Emma is, and how _hot_ she was in the bathroom, and she wonders if maybe she’s that wet, still, and—

Warm fingers are sliding up her skirt and she does nothing to stop them.“Want to touch you,” Emma whispers, and Regina kisses her hard and hot and Emma’s hand keeps moving upwards.“Can I touch you?”

She has to force herself to pull away from Emma’s mouth, to look towards the side door of the club and the entrance to the alley, to find her voice.“Someone could see,” she rasps out, like the cigarette lodged in her throat and not in the cracks in the concrete around front.Someone _could_ see, but she spreads her legs anyway—as much as her dress allows, at least—and runs her fingers down Emma’s arm until her thumb presses into the crook of her elbow, holding them where they are.

“I want to touch you,” Emma says again, and looking at each other like this, Regina’s not sure who hitches her skirt up, who moves Emma’s hand to her panties, who’s actually pressing Emma’s fingers to her—“Please, can I touch you?”

_God_.Emma keeps looking at her, looking at her, waiting for her, and what else is there to do but let her fingers trace down Emma’s forearm, scratch at her wrist, come to rest on the cut-up peaks of her knuckles?“Yeah,” she whispers, and she might be shaking and she might be shivering but Emma, Emma, Emma, Emma is all goosebumps and weak knees and somehow still pulling Regina in closer.

A month ago and it would have been just touching.Just a strong touch after a few drinks and maybe they’d have survived it a month ago.But Emma keeps _looking_ at her, looking up at her even with two fingers pressing strong and rhythmic against her clit, and the way that frowning mouth looks when parted in awe, and Regina has to _do_ something.Has to, has to, and when that frowning mouth and those candy-pink lips are right there, when Emma tastes like lime and sugar and rum, when she can see Emma’s breath clouding between them and then not clouding at all, kissing her is all she can do.

Emma sighs and it’s _awful_ , what just the feeling of that breath does to her, how she wants it again and harder and forever.How just the heat and pressure of Emma’s hand at her cunt makes her _want_.She wants to be closer and she wants to be warmer and she wants, she wants, she wants.“Emma,” she whispers, and it doesn’t even come out, swallowed by the long and slow and ragged breath Emma takes.“Emma—Emma, _please_ —“

Her voice sounds shattered and it makes every muscle in Emma’s body seize up.“Oh—oh, God, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—“Her hand jerks away from Regina and it’s all going wrong, the worst kind of wrong.

“ _No,”_ she gasps, and Emma freezes.Emma freezes and it’s a chance.So Regina presses, holds Emma’s hand between her thighs, rubbing her index finger against Emma’s wedding ring, and waits for Emma to look at her again with that— _there_.There.With that mouth of _want_ and those eyes of _please_.“Come here,” she murmurs, and takes a step back, pulling Emma along, one hand tugging at the neckline of her white dress and the other holding her _there_ , there where she’s so wet it hurts.“Come _here_ ,” she says again, and Emma follows, stepping in and in until they are pressed against the wall and still not close enough.

“Regina,” Emma starts, but then just sighs again and kisses her, soft and smooth, and there’s nothing subtle about how she’s pulling at her right leg.Regina goes with it, hitches up slightly and then more because— _fuck_.Emma drags her nails lightly but not at all from the top of her thigh to the back of her knee and _fuck_ , Regina barely suppresses a full body shiver, barely contains it to her head dropping back against the wall and it hurts but it doesn’t matter at all.Not at all, because Emma’s reversing the direction of the scratch and mimicking the movement with her teeth at Regina’s neck, and when she does it a third time she’s reduced to just murmuring Regina’s name against her mouth.The softest babble of her name and then a helpless little sigh, Emma’s free hand coming up to thread though her hair and settle just where her skull would hit the brick.

Maybe they’d have survived it a month ago, but now—now Emma’s got a rhythm with her hand and her hips and now their mouths _fit_ and there’s not a chance in hell anymore.Not now that Regina can touch her in return, can palm her breasts and grab at her ass and tease at the edges of her dress and feel the shift and play of the muscles of her lower back.Not now, when they find that rhythm and Regina, like a fool, caresses Emma’s cheek and Emma, like a fool, turns into the touch and kisses her palm, and her thumb, and her ring, and her mouth.

“Emma,” she tries again, and her voice is blown but now Emma _knows_ it, and she’s listening between soft nips to her bottom lip.“Emma—please—I need—“

The press of their bodies, this just-right rocking—Emma doesn’t let up, but something about the way she looks at her and the way she murmurs, “Anything, Regina, anything,” makes everything slow down and stretch out, makes it easy to just look at her, take it all in.

And those eyes with all that want—Regina ignites.“I need you under,” she whispers.“I need you under and inside.”

She can feel Emma’s breathing stutter, feels how Emma’s breasts pressed against hers suddenly give and drop.“Fuck,” Emma whispers, and it breaks the rhythm they have with a sharper, stronger jerk.“Oh, God, fuck— _yes_.”And that should mean something, should mean contact and heat and something for her body to hold onto, but what it ends up as is Emma tracing the backs of her fingers down Regina’s cheek, an almost trembling breath.“I—I _can’t_ ,” Emma gets out, and stops the tight circles that weren’t nearly enough but were definitely better than this, this _nothing_.

“Are you _fucking_ _kidding—_ ”

Emma cuts her off with mouth and tongue and an agonizing roll of her hips and it’s not enough, at all, but it’s something.“I—My hands,” Emma murmurs, and Regina’s teeth catch on her lip, forcing a low groan from her mouth.“I can’t touch you with cuts on my hands—”

This _idiot_ , being so… _Emma_ , even now.“I want to murder you right now,” Regina whispers, but softly kisses her, once, twice, rests her forehead against Emma’s.“I want—I want you _in_ me.”

Groaning, Emma drops her free hand to her breasts, thumb carelessly dragging against her nipple.“Fuck.I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—”

A gentle _shh_ , kiss to the corner of her mouth.“I know.”Carefully, Regina shifts her hips, forward into the strong fingers resting against her underwear, up and then down to grind against the solidity of Emma’s body.“I know, I know.”

Emma kisses her again, lazy counterpoint to the sharp, insistent pressure between them, resumes the slight movements of her fingers and her hips.“I promise, I’ll make you come, it’ll be good, Regina, I promise—”

Something about Emma rasping _I’ll make you come_ spikes this feeling, this feeling just beginning to buzz through her body, and Regina follows it into tension that makes her dig her nails in at Emma’s shoulder, at her ass.She _can’t_ come, not with just pressure, not without texture and thrust and some way for her to anchor herself in sex, and she should tell Emma that, tell her that this is only going to get her so far and they have to—figure something out, or quit, or—

“My mouth,” Emma whispers, “I can use my mouth, Regina, just say the word and I will, I’m good with my mouth, I promise, I’ll make you come so good in my mouth—“

She comes.Not hard, not explosive, but it’s real, an electric tremor through her body and a soft moan that’s muffled with a kiss.Not hard, not explosive, but she holds onto it and the image of Emma on her knees for her, right here in a back alley, on her knees and willing and promising everything.

Emma’s hand and hips are slowing, stopping, but she’s still pressed tightly to her, as if even an inch of space will ruin this.Whatever this is.However they’re going to survive this.“You just—“

“Yeah,” Regina whispers, and feels her hand trembling against Emma’s waist.

And Emma, foolish beautiful Emma, looks at her with that face of wonder again, wonder that darkens and dilates into something far more comprehensible.She moves her hands to the thin band of Regina’s—frankly ruined—panties, curls her fingers over the edge and starts to tug.“Please, Regina,” she murmurs, and her nails, short as they are, scratch over Regina’s hipbones and _fuck_.“Please, let me taste—“

“Swan!”

Emma jumps, and freezes, and Regina looks to the mouth of the alley with fear pressing sharp and severe at her eyes and in her chest.The entrance is empty, but the bellow comes again, loud and _angry_ , and Regina gently pushes Emma away from her, stifles a groan at the loss of her hands and her breasts and her hips and her heat.“That—that’s probably Javi,” she says, tugs her dress back down, meets Emma’s gaze and immediately looks away.The swell of Emma’s lips and that wide and wonderful darkness in her eyes—Regina can’t look at her, not yet.

“Probably,” Emma agrees, and reaches for her again.But she’s good—so sweet, so good—and just rests, hands smoothing her dress down for her and forehead against her forehead.“I—I want—

“ _Swan!”_ Javi bellows again, and then he’s actually at the entrance to the alley, scowling and sweaty, two coats slung over his shoulder.Behind him, Monica’s zipping up her own coat with Regina’s folded over her arm.“Swan, what the _fuck_.”

She feels Emma shrinking, flinching, and sighs softly, wipes at the edges of Emma’s burgundy-smudged lips with her thumb.“Javi, don’t,” she calls out, and waits for Emma to look at her again.“Let’s just—let’s just go, okay?”

“Don’t tell me _don’t_ , my partner leaves a fucking club without a word and without her phone and I’m—“

“ _Javi_ ,” Monica interrupts, and hisses something in Spanish that sounds like _mira sus manos_.“Here, Regina, I’ve got your jacket. There’s a first aid kit in the car.”Finally, Emma looks up, in time to reach out and take the coat Monica’s offering, hold it up for Regina to slip her arms into, settles it at her neck and gently draws her hair out from under the collar.  

It’s foolish and irrational and plainly stupid, but after everything—the whole night—it’s this, this tiny little thing, that tells her they are _fucked_.

* * *

The drive back is excruciating, only partially because Emma keeps drawing circles just above her knee.

Javi is _livid_.He’s careening through the loops of 495 and spitting fire from between gritted teeth.“ _Partners_ , Swan.You know what the fuck that means?”

“I said I’m sorry.”

“You don’t sound fucking sorry.”

“I’m not _fucking_ sorry, I’m just sorry, so lay the fuck off, okay?” Emma snaps, and takes all of two seconds before she deflates again.“Fuck. I’m sorry, man.”

Silence for three clicks, and then Javi, with the softest edge of humor: “But not _fucking_ sorry.Jackass.”

Emma snorts in amusement, and adjusts the arm she has slung over Regina’s shoulders, draws her into her body a little more.It’s too easy to relax into this, to lean back on Emma and turn into her, press her nose to her neck and close her eyes and _be easy_.Too easy.Their right hands are clasped against Regina’s shoulder, and Emma smells of sweat and salt and smoke, and faintly of disinfectant and the plastic of the bandaids Javi slapped across her knuckles, and it’s just so…

“Leave her be, Javi,” Monica murmurs, and Regina watches the way she strokes the back of the hand he’s got on the gear shift.“You’ve got no room to judge.”

“Like hell I don’t—I never up and _disappeared_ on—“

“Three words, baby: Hector’s thirtieth birthday.”

Javi lapses into sullen silence, and when Emma snickers, Regina savors the vibrations coming through her chest.“That sounds like a story,” she says, is slightly mortified when it comes out as a lazy, sated sigh.

But the smile Monica flashes back at her is understanding, sweet, empathetic.“Oh, no, not at all.Unless you count Javi here arranging to fight my ex at a playground without telling anyone about it like that _isn’t_ a set-up to get jumped as a story.”

“Goddamnit, Mon…” Javi groans, and cuts across two lanes to take the express leg of Route 3.“Fine. _Fine_.I get it, Swan. _Fine_.Just—fuck, don’t do it again, all right?You both could’ve been seriously fucked out there.The guy could’ve been—“

“I know,” Emma says softly, and there’s something heavy in her voice that makes Regina close her eyes tightly, like maybe she can ward off what comes next.“I just—I wasn’t thinking about anything but her, you know?”

“Fuckin’ sap,” Javi grumbles, but Regina hears the gentle buss of lips on skin, assumes he’s kissed Monica’s hand.And then there’s a gentle touch to her own chin, the strange texture of the bandaids criss-crossed on Emma’s hands pressing against her jaw, and she doesn’t think she would even remember how to refuse—just accepts the kiss and welcomes another.

“I don’t think I can stop touching you,” Emma murmurs, keeps the third kiss gentle and short.

Regina takes a fourth without hesitation.

* * *

Her hands are trembling to the point that she can’t quite get the key in the door.

Emma tries to help, running a hand from her hip up her ribs and down her arm, but that touch is anything but casual, anything but helpful, and she almost drops the keys.Emma snags them with her pinky and ring finger, presses them back into her palm and strokes a thumb over the points of her wrist.“Easy, killer,” she mumbles, kisses Regina’s neck just as she finally gets the key in.“If in and turn is too complicated for you, this night—“

The lock gives and she kicks the door open, reaches back and grabs a fistful of Emma’s coat, pulls her into the house and pushes her back against the door, lets them both just _feel_ for a heartbeat.“Don’t—don’t _taunt_ me,” she gets out, and Emma swallows, nods almost immediately.“I mean it, Emma—don’t—“

This kiss is—this kiss is like the first.Fierce and guileless and completely, horribly untethered.“Jesus, Regina, just shut up and take my fucking clothes off,” Emma grumbles against her lips, against her neck, against the top of her right breast.

She should be irritated, should retort—but all she can do is grin, and kiss back, and push Emma’s coat from her shoulders to the floor.

 


	15. Chapter 15

Emma is very, very good with her mouth.

They don’t quite make it up the unlit stairs, Regina scrabbling to touch Emma and also to get her out of her dress and to touch her out of her dress, before there’s a sound from Emma, low and frustrated and edgy.  It’s guttural and it uncoils all the tension that’s been hovering at the base of her spine, sends it all winding out through her veins like sunlight in the winter.  “Can’t—don’t— _fuck_ ,” Emma grits out, and pushes Regina up against the picture glass window, hard but not careless.

Her first instinct is to push back, and keep them going in this general stumble towards a bedroom, but before she can even think of the word _upstairs_ , Emma’s hiking her skirt up again, and her hands are tugging down on Regina’s panties.  And then Regina can’t breathe, because there’s Emma on her knees, pressing hot, open mouthed kisses to her hipbones and the peak of her pubic bone and across the triangle of hair that she’d talked herself out of trimming that morning.  She can’t help it; she gasps, and goes to pull Emma back to standing, but somewhere between the impulse and the execution, Emma dips her chin and swipes her tongue, quickly and coarsely.  And Regina falters, tugs in instead of up and says _oh_ instead of _up_ and Emma smiles against her cunt, _smiles_ , and drags her panties to the floor.

The colored glass is solid and smooth and cool against her exposed back and Emma’s mouth is hot, hot, insistent and soft.  She starts out with just her lips, light touches of her tongue, thumbs pressing into the space between Regina’s labia and the sides of her thighs to spread her slowly.  And then a full lick that feels obscene and amazing and some low, brief vibration, just for a second, and Regina realizes that Emma’s _hummed_ , appreciatively, like she’s savoring—God, her taste.  Emma’s savoring her taste.

Her grip on Emma’s hair tightens, and Emma smiles again, kisses the inside of her thigh and looks up into Regina’s eyes with something so much like affection in her gaze.  Eyes still locked on Regina’s, she ever so lightly touches the tip of her tongue to Regina’s clit, flicks lightly a few times, then a little firmer.  And then she closes her lips on the firm nub and sucks, and Regina falls.  There’s no delay to it; her head drops back against the window and Emma’s name just falls from her mouth, weak but definite.  “Emma,” she murmurs, “Emma, Emma, Emma.”

Emma merely hums again, doesn’t stop, steadily ramps up the movements of her lips and tongue, mouth roving the full length of her cunt, until whatever sounds keep rising from Regina’s chest are incomprehensible to both of them.  Incomprehensible; all she wants to understand is the heat between Emma’s mouth and her cunt and this rising _force_ in her body, a buzzing sparking solid _push_ up and out and back in again.

She doesn’t take long.  Not with Emma on her knees, attentive and eager and good like she is.  She doesn’t take long at all before that force, that push, is expanding out of her and looping back in, before she’s crying out and gripping even tighter, before Emma slows but doesn’t stop until the trembling in her lower body has eased up enough for her to stand fully on her own again.  Even then, Emma stays kneeling, kissing and nuzzling the tops of her thighs, finally grabbing the back of each of Regina’s heels and slipping them from her feet, until Regina slides a hand from her hair to her jaw, pushes up so Emma looks at her.  “Come here,” she whispers, and watches Emma smile with glistening mouth and chin.  “Come _here_.”

“Demanding,” Emma teases, but rises in a rush, sways for a moment when she’s back on her feet and it isn’t until then, when Emma stumbles and reaches for her hand and they steady each other, that Regina thinks _the window_ and thinks _glass_.  With a hiss, she goes to pull her dress down again, but Emma’s still got one of her hands and catches the movement, shakes her head.  “Nuh-uh,” she murmurs, pulls Regina against her, and her hands are warm and rough and possessive and Regina _shivers._ “Take it off.”

“Take it off me,” she retorts, but it’s too breathy, too inviting, or not nearly enough, because the speed at which Emma tries to untie the knot at the base of her neck is agonizing.  “For God’s sake—sometime tonight, Emma—”

Emma kisses her, and Regina can _feel_ her laughing, but she can taste— _oh_.  Oh, oh, oh, this is— _herself_.  Herself, and the dull aftertaste of rum, and— _oh_.  She tightens her grip on Emma’s neck, kisses her harder until she remembers to relax her hand, to not crush when she can hold.  The response in Emma’s shoulders is immediate, and in apology she massages gently before letting her hand come around, to stroke down the length of Emma’s neck and sternum with just fingers and then just nails.  Down, and up, and down, and then slightly out, and again.

“Up,” Emma murmurs, and then lowers her mouth, hums into the softness beneath the corner of her jaw, tugs the halter strap with vaguely impatient fingers.  “Upsta— _fuck_.”

Slightly out and again, until Regina’s hand can slip neatly into the shelf bra of Emma’s dress, until she can stroke and squeeze and cup and make Emma stutter and stumble.  “Yes, dear, we’re getting there,” she teases, and drags the length of her index finger along the underside of a nipple, smirks when Emma covers her hand to keep her there and encourage a firmer touch.  “More?”

A broken, unenunciated “Yes!” and Regina grins wider, keeps one hand in and lightly tweaking that nipple while her other hand tugs the strap of Emma’s dress from her shoulder and down further, just enough to be able to get her mouth on the upper curve of Emma’s other breast.  And maybe it’s because Emma’s encouraging harder and rougher and maybe it’s because she’s just who she is, but she starts with teeth, sinks them in to the fleshy outer swell and smiles, smiles, smiles as Emma moans, and curses, and bucks up into her mouth.

They are almost at the upper landing of the stairs and it’s just too much for Emma—walking backwards and trying to strip and trying to strip Regina fully and still wearing her heels, after all—and she goes down, narrowly missing bringing Regina down by the teeth with her.  For a second, all they can do is stare at each other in shock, but then Emma _giggles_ , high and sweet, and reaches for her again.  “Here?” Regina asks, but it’s not really a question, not when she’s leaning forwards to press Emma back into the top three steps.

“I don’t give a damn where, just _touch_ me,” Emma whimpers, her voice disintegrating as Regina gets the second strap of her dress down.

It’s been—it’s been a long time, since she could even think to admire a partner, and maybe admirable isn’t the first word to come to mind for Emma in this moment, shoving her dress over her hips and trying to kick it down her legs, but for the brief moment when Regina pulls back to actually help her, she’s—yes, she admires.  The length and strength in her legs, faintest vertical lines outlining her abdominals crosshatched with stark stretch marks, and—

She has to keep her eyes moving, focuses on Emma’s bare breasts, the blush of arousal spread across her chest, faintest marks from Regina’s fingers over her breastbone and blossoming bite mark on one side.  “Regina,” Emma murmurs, and brings Regina’s hand back to her breast, sighs with something thicker than contentment when Regina catches on.  “You don’t—you don’t have to be gentle.”

Sweet, foolish Emma.  Regina keeps her fingers light at Emma’s breasts, kisses her lightly, lightly, lightly.  “Just for now,” she murmurs, and when Emma sighs in something like acquiescence, she moves her mouth in a steady line to the nipple she’s been teasing.  “I want,” she starts, and outlines her areola with just the tip of her tongue.  Emma’s breathing hitches and the tiniest gasp escapes her, and Regina smiles, lets the rest of the sentence lapse to lave her tongue once, twice, and then close her mouth entirely.

She alternates between teeth and tongue and just lips, keeping all of her touches light and, if the way Emma twists under her is any indication, torturous.  “God, Regina, Regina, please, please God—“

Regina laughs, drops amused kisses across Emma’s chest to switch to her marked breast.  “Flattery won’t get you anywhere,” she teases, stays just as light, but she lets her hands drag down Emma’s sides, lets her fingers dig and curl at her hips and ass until the band of Emma’s black and white thong—with a little white bow on the front, and she’ll make fun of _that_ later—is twisted around her fingers, until she can feel more tension in the elastic than in the way Emma’s holding onto her hair.  “These are going.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Emma exhales, and _maybe_ Regina’s disappointed that they don’t rip right off, but she gets them down Emma’s thighs and lets her kick them off the rest of the way to join the puddle of fabric in the middle of the stairs.  “I’ll clean up later, just—”

Regina draws her thumb, nail up, from Emma’s opening to her clit, smiles at the wetness that coats her thumb and the knuckles of her other fingers as they brush over the same path.  “You’ve been so patient, haven’t you, dearest?”

“Dear-est?” Emma echoes, voice in tatters as Regina traces her again, this time with her index finger.  “How—how many ways—to kill me—now?”

Regina laughs, kisses just above Emma’s navel, nips at the same spot.  “Just one, dearest,” she murmurs, and slides one finger in.  “But you can certainly ask for more.”

 

* * *

 

 

“Wait—wait,” Emma pants, turns her face down into the sheets before turning to the side again, some type of self-muffling move.  “I need—fuck, Regina, I need a minute.  Or twenty.”

Laughing, Regina presses the ball of her palm to the inside of Emma’s thigh, gently nuzzles and nips at the soft skin above the back of her knee.  “I’m not—I was _going_ to ask you if you have water in here.”

“Sure you were,” Emma mumbles, but there’s a smile in her voice, and she’s stretching one arm out to gropingly search the lower shelf of her rickety nightstand.  There’s a hollow _plink_ , the unmistakable sound of an empty plastic bottle hitting something solid.  “Uh, shit.”

“Useless,” Regina groans, and laughs into Emma’s skin when she huffs with exaggerated offense.  “At least you’re pretty.”

Emma snorts, and reaches back, fingers splayed outwards seekingly until Regina reaches up, lets their fingers come together.  “Real sweet talker,” she grumbles, but she’s drawing Regina’s hand up, further and further until Regina gets the hint, dots a few kisses to Emma’s spine before kissing her shoulder, the twist of her neck, her mouth.  It’s a lazy kiss—Emma seems particularly exhausted and Regina feels her eyes getting too heavy to resist—but still, somehow, sparks that low humming in her blood again.  “We need water,” Emma finally murmurs.  

“Pre-emptive aspirin, maybe,” Regina adds, feels Emma turning beneath her and shifts her weight at just the right moment to slip right into the warm dip that Emma’s half vacated.

“Good call.”  Emma runs one finger from her hip to her shoulder blade, tracing idle curlicues into her skin.  “I have a strap-on.”

Regina blinks.

“That’s—completely unrelated to the water and aspirin things,” Emma stammers out, slight panic at the corner of her eyes.  “Sorry.  I just—um. I don’t even know why I—“

But Regina gets it, chuckles lowly and drags her parted lips up the column of Emma’s throat.  “Listing off things to get done before sleep?”

And Emma sort of laughs, but sort of doesn’t, and then they’re just looking at each other for a moment.  “You’re not a checklist,” she mumbles, and ducks her head.  “I just—I want this to be good for you.”

Sweet, foolish Emma; Regina kisses her, focuses on nothing but the sensation of their mouths moving together.  “It is,” she murmurs, kisses her again.  “It is.”  There’s an immense sigh from Emma; the distance between their bodies gets even smaller.  “Do you—do you want to?”

Emma looks at her, looks between her eyes and her mouth for what feels like an hour.  “Water first,” she finally decides.  “And then—if not tonight—?”

And Regina smiles again, because sweet, sweet, foolish Emma.  “The morning,” she starts, kisses the very tip of Emma’s nose and shifts her body to press Emma onto her back.  “Tomorrow night.  The night after that.  Next weekend, maybe.”  She hums, thinks forward in the calendar.  “Halloween weekend, isn’t it?  Mmm.  That could be a plan, couldn’t it?  Find all the ways to make me scream.”

“Holy _fuck_ ,” Emma breathes out, and settles her hands on Regina’s ass, draws her over one thigh.  “Keep talking like that and Halloween’ll get here tonight.”

Regina laughs again, bright and just—she doesn’t even know the words.  “Water first, Emma,” she chides, and sits up, rolls her right shoulder out, watches Emma try to look away from her breasts and fail.  “And aspirin.”

“Right, right,” Emma agrees, drops her head back and covers her eyes with her hand.  “I’m just gonna—not look at you, for a little bit.  If that’s okay.”

It’s oddly adorable, the way Emma peeks from between her fingers twice before covering her eyes with her other hand, as well.  “Silly,” Regina murmurs, and kisses her fingertips before rolling off Emma, scooting to the foot of the bed.  “Should I bring you up some, then?”

Emma’s fingers, warm and rough, trace across the base of her spine.  “No, I’ll come down.  You don’t need to—do that type of stuff for me.”

Maybe it’s Emma’s touch, or the way she says _you don’t need to_ , or maybe it’s the air without another body as a buffer, but she shivers twice, hard, and feels Emma pull away.  “It got cold,” she covers, and then feels something cool and soft against her shoulder.  It’s an enormous flannel shirt, faded blue plaid with pink-tinged spots on the front tails and the sleeves already rolled up to about half length, and she looks back at Emma in disbelief for a moment before slipping it on.  “What _is_ this.”

“The best shirt in the whole wide world,” Emma drawls, and tugs one sleeve for her, bringing it back above her wrist.  “Because not everyone can have fancy robes and housecoats and shit.”

Regina snorts, rolls her eyes, quickly does the two center buttons to close the shirt around her.  “It’s four times your size.”

“It’s four times _your_ size,” Emma retorts immediately, and Regina just rolls her eyes again, squirms slightly when she feels Emma’s fingers slip under the back of the shirt.  “You’re so tiny.”

“ _Thin_ ice, Emma.”

She can feel the warmth of Emma’s body as she comes to sit right behind her, knees on either side of her hips and chest pressing against her back.  “It’s cute,” Emma murmurs again, this time against her earlobe.  “You’re cute.”

“Am _not_ ,” she says, but it’s lost in a soft moan when Emma starts kissing her neck, hands stroking just under her breasts.  “Emma.  Come on.  Water.”

“In a minute.”

“Now.”

A heavy sigh into the crook of her neck, and then Emma flops back on the bed, head half off the side of the mattress.  “Fine.”

With her knees apart and still naked, Emma is—Regina can _smell_ her, see her, is so close that she should just touch her, and before she really processes, she’s stroking up the length of Emma’s shin, letting her pinky graze the underside of Emma’s thigh.  “You’re making this difficult,” she murmurs, kisses the inside of Emma’s knee and inhales deeply.  “Quit it.”

“You quit it,” Emma counters, but she’s spreading her legs further and that’s not fair at all, not when she’s hot and wet and shining.  “Regina.  You said water.”

Frustrated, she nips at the inside of Emma’s upper thigh, draws a yelp from her that drops into a whine when she straightens up, all business, and actually gets off the bed.  “Is the aspirin in the medicine cabinet up here, or with the stuff above the sink?” she asks, halfway into the hall already.

“Mmm—I’m remembering putting it next to the Tums. So downstairs,” Emma calls after her.

She picks her way around Emma’s discarded dress on the stairs, four steps lower than she remembers it being and stretched along the base of the railing.  “Don’t forget to pick up our clothes,” Regina calls back.

Emma’s automatic response is, “What the fuck, Regina,” followed by, “Shit, that’s so not fair.  I would’ve said anything to—come on.”

“You promised,” Regina sing-songs, looks at her own heels and panties in a heap under the window and blushes, continues down the stairs.  “Mine too.”

“ _Definitely_ didn’t.”  But she hears Emma get up anyway, can even hear a drawer opening and closing while she fills a glass from the fridge dispenser.  

She drinks half of it while she fills a second glass, sets the full one down on the counter and keeps sipping at her own while she rifles through the cabinet above the sink.  “Stupid place for all the medicines,” she mutters, and huffs when neither of the baskets on the lowest shelf turns up anything but Flintstone vitamins and TicTacs.  “Which shelf?”

“Top, I think,” Emma shouts, close enough that she’s probably on the stairs already, and Regina huffs to herself again, glares at the shelf and stretches onto her tiptoes to tilt the first basket towards her.  Behind her, Emma shuffles in, and there’s a dull _thunk_ and _swish_ of shoes and clothing dropping to the floor.  “Oh,” Emma says, and, “Fuck.”

Regina’s too focused on picking out which little sample bottle has actual aspirin to realize anything until there are hands at the very tops of her thighs, pushing upwards to palm and knead her ass, and the edge of the flannel shirt is flipped up to press into the small of her back.  She’s too focused, so she starts, gasps, and drops her weight from her toes to her heels again, and that’s—Emma presses forward, bare hands and sweatpants-covered hips, to pin her to the edge of the counter.  “Emma,” she says, stifles a moan when all she gets in response is a shallow thrust that hits nothing but still makes her _need_.  “Emma— _water_.”

“You’re making this difficult,” Emma murmurs against the back of her neck, and she has to laugh, even if it’s cut short by her own groan when one rough hand slides up and around her torso to palm her breasts.  “Quit making this difficult.”

She doesn’t exactly mean to, but somehow she ends up pairing a mocking laugh with a slow roll of her hips—and, all right, maybe she kind of does mean to, because she doesn’t know if there’s anything more gratifying than the way Emma’s breath stutters and stops.  “I couldn’t possibly make this easier for you,” she finally says, and points to the full glass of water on the counter.  “Unless you want a crazy straw to go with it.”

“Don’t tease me with crazy straws unless you mean it,” Emma replies, but keeps one hand on Regina’s breast, cupping with just slightly increasing pressure, while she takes the glass with her other hand.  “And don’t move.”

She is absolutely not going to just stand around while Emma chugs water like some type of overdramatic athlete—except Emma pinches her nipple lightly, and she can’t hold in the soft _yes_ , can’t quite make her body not arch into it.  “The aspirin,” she tries, and murmurs _yes_ again when Emma’s hand slides to her other breast, when there’s another push forward at their nested hips.

A hollow thud marks Emma slamming the empty glass back onto the counter.  “I don’t need the aspirin right now,” she says, low and lush and right into the skin just inside the collar of the flannel shirt.  “I do need to fuck you, right now.”  She pairs it with a slow roll of her hips, a heavy grind, and Regina moans, pushes back to try and get contact that’s more stimulating than suggestive.  “What do you need, Regina?”

She reaches back to grab Emma’s neck, to try and pull her forward and down and in and closer, but Emma resists just slightly, keeps the tiniest bit of space between their mouths.  “You need the aspirin, or you need me to fuck you?”

“Fuck,” is all she gets out before dragging Emma’s mouth to hers, before Emma’s back to groping her ass and pushing her forward into the counter until she’s up on her toes again.  “Emma—your _hands_ , fuck—“

But then the only pressure to her body is Emma’s hand at her tailbone, keeping the shirt up and her weight forward, and she realizes Emma’s squatting behind her, opening the cabinet under the sink—

“You are _not_ fucking me with kitchen gloves.”

Maybe it’s the absurdity of her delivery or maybe this, this laughing thing, maybe this is them, but Emma stops rummaging for long enough to snort against her thigh, to kiss and then bite and kiss the lower curve of her ass, still laughing.  “No, I’m not, but God, could you imagine your face?  If I’d just started stroking up your leg with a big yellow paw?”

She’d laugh, but Emma _is_ stroking up her leg with a thin latex glove on, the pack lying open on the floor.  “Oh,” she says instead, and hums softly when Emma uses her teeth on her ass again, just once, before standing again.

“On your toes,” Emma murmurs, and slides the hand that had been keeping her still further up her back, pushes her torso forward just a little more until Regina has to grab onto the edge of the sink for balance.  “Good.  Spread your legs a little—just like that.  That’s good.”  Emma’s teasing now, running just one finger through her wetness, skirting around her clit and over her entrance without any intent.  “God.  You look fucking magnificent.”

“Emma,” she whispers, and her voice breaks.

“I got you,” Emma promises, and circles twice with two fingers, centers them and pushes in, finally, finally, finally.  “ _God_.”

There’s one terrible, wonderful moment of inertia, everything in the world hanging on the feeling of Emma’s fingers in her, on the weight and the width and the pressure and the _ease_.  The ease of it.  She exhales and feels Emma’s breath on her shoulder, tremulous and weak, and the sudden need she feels, the clarity of it—she sucks in a breath, moves her left hand off the edge of the counter and before she’s even made the smallest motion, Emma’s there.  Emma’s there, hand under hers, fingers intertwining, coming back to the edge of the counter to steady them both.

Both; both, and Regina smiles, grins, turns her head to speak over her shoulder, knows just how close Emma’s mouth is by the way a whole new tension winds through their fingers.  “I thought you needed to fuck me,” she murmurs.

Emma laughs, pressing the line of her nose into Regina’s shoulder, and withdraws her fingers with a slow half-twist.  “I’ve needed to fuck you since the day I met you.  Let a girl savor a moment, would you?”  She pushes back in, quick and strong, and Regina bites the skin below her own lips, tries to ignore the words and just focus on the feeling, but then Emma’s chin settles into the crook of her neck, counterpoint to another slow outstroke.  “Nuh-uh.  I want every sound you can make.  Don’t you dare.”

This—this, she can handle.  This, she knows how to ride out.  She shifts her hips, just enough to add a little more force to Emma’s push in.  “Earn it,” she retorts, feels Emma smirk against her skin and thinks they’re clear, they’ve made it—

There’s tightness at their linked hands and Emma presses the lightest of kisses behind her ear, whispers something that can’t be _anything, anything_ before thrusting in, strong enough to make her cry out, a wordless moan that means entirely too many things, over and over and over again.


	16. a note from the author

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because I left both this story and The Light in Autumn at midpoints in the narrative, I'd like to offer some explanation for my absence and share the plan for the future.

Hi, friends.

 

As many of you are aware, I've been absent from fandom for about a year now, both writing and analysis work. I do still receive and read all of your comments and am grateful for every single one.

 

Because I left both this story and _The Light in Autumn_ at midpoints in the narrative, I'd like to offer some explanation for my absence and share the plan for the future.

 

Three major factors have changed the amount of time I've been able to devote to writing: graduate school, activism, and love.

  1. For the past year, I've been writing and researching my masters' thesis along with taking a full course load and working a part-time job. It's almost done; I anticipate having much more time after May.
  2. Being in graduate school has given me access to advocacy resources for myself and for my communities. Many of you know, from my meta-analysis work, how important racial and queer equity are to me. I have spent much of the past year agitating and advocating for and with other queer folks of color towards a goal of justice and equity.
  3. My activism led me to meet (and woo) the love of my life. She is the most extraordinary person and makes me see new and wondrous things about the world, about mercy, about love. It has become very hard to sit down to write the narrative I wish to see about queer women when I have the option of living it. This is not to say I don't _want_ to tell these stories, not to say they don't matter to me anymore; they matter more than ever. Once my degree is complete, I hope to re-engage with storytelling in a way that reflects this new privilege of love.



 

Regarding _The Light in Autumn_ : somewhere around the beginning of _Orfeo_ , I started to think about turning it into an original work. I am going to pursue this plan aggressively beginning this summer, and as such may not complete the fanfic version. Once I come to a final decision about this, I will be sure to post publicly to let you all know.

 

Regarding _Cops & Robbers_:

I was born and raised in New Jersey, fifteen minutes away from New York City. You can see the skyline from the Route 3 onramp near my mother's house. My roots are very deliberately grown into this area; the settings, the people, every piece of atmosphere and exposition in this work are personal and real.

So writing a story about a queer Latina who spent a decade as a single mother, writing a story about a queer white formerly incarcerated cop, writing a story about the two of them and how they build a life in this place that is real, that is imbedded in my body in ways I may never know how to communicate, requires me to engage with things that I’m currently wrestling with in ways that mean I’m not ready to write about them. This story requires me to engage with issues of state-sanctioned race-based murder. It requires me to engage with issues of documentation and immigration. It requires me to engage with cycles of trauma and abuse. It requires me to work, to labor, to name the political climate we live in, to write it accurately and critically.

I cannot write this story if I do not talk about Islan Nettles and Raynette Turner and Eric Garner and Kalief Browder, Akai Gurley and Anthony Baez and Sean Bell. I can't write this story if I don't talk about ICE raids in Irvington and Paterson and Union. I can't write this story if I don't talk about the women's prison less than 25 miles from my childhood home where Homeland Security threw--buried--women of Middle Eastern, North African or Desi descent with no evidence of wrongdoing besides ancestry and what happened to the mosque they were supposed to build in my neighborhood. I have to be ready to talk about "cleaning up" Newark and what that did and is doing to the demographics of the county. I have to talk about the Division of Youth and Family Services. I have to talk about where you go to light a funeral pyre when the only sanctioned crematoriums are Christian-run.

It would be irresponsible--no, further. It would be a betrayal of who I am, what this place means to me when I call it home, if the story that comes out of entering our real world is a mere romance.

So I hope you all can bear with me while I do the work this story requires to go where I want it to go and be what I want it to be. It may take some time; it will be worth it.


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